":- -7-
'otjflf 1967", one year after the founding of
■' h! ll ■■ Party, Huey Newton' was Involved
i i iiuiififi during which an Oakland police officer
•m 1 , killed. Newton spent three years in prison
blfon being released and having his charges dis-
missed, and his jailing brought cries of "Free Huey"
from supporters around the world.
Tins engrossing and well-written autobiography
recounts the forming of a revolutionary and shows
how the degrading and psychologically destructive
penal system forged Newton's already growing spirit.
When Newton was a child, his father instilled in him
a sense of dignity and pride; as an adolescent, he
was torn between religious principles and life as a
hustler; as a young man. he founded the radical Black
Panther Parly with Bobby Seale. and finally, in soli-
tary confinement in the Alameda County Jail, he
reached deep within himself to find the strength to
face adversity: and even death without fear.
Huey Newton is as intelligent and charismatic on
paper as he was in person, and his autobiography
serves as bold testimony to the ideas that formed the
Black Panther movement in the 1960s and 70s, and
that are being aired and reconsidered today.
"Revolutionary suicide does not mean that I and
my comrades have a death wish; it means just the
opposite. We have such a strong desire to live with
hope and human dignity that existence without
them is impossible. "
— from the book
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Contents
A MANIFESTO
Revolutionary Suicide: The Way of Liberation
Part One
1 Starting Out 11
2 Losing lg
3 Growing 23
4 Changing 29
5 Choosing 36
6 High School 45
Part Two
7 Reading 53
8 Moving On 56
9 College and the Afro-American Association
10 Learning 67
11 The Brothers on the Block 73
12 Scoring 78
13 Loving gi
I till ' I I '
t'm 1 line-
I 1 I* <li mi yg
I,-, litibhy Scale 105
Hi The Founding of the Black Panther Party no
17 Patrolling 114
18 Eldridge Cleaver 22S
19 Denzil Dowell 137
20 Sacramento and the "Panther Bill" M5
21 Growing Pains 152
Part Four
22 Raising Consciousness 163
23 Crisis: October 28, 1967 171
24 Aftermath 177
25 Strategy 187
Part Five
26 Trial 201
27 The Penal Colony 247
Part Six
28 Release 273
29 Rebuilding 293
30 Fallen Comrade 306
31 Surviving 3^3
32 China 322
33 The Defection of Eldridge and Reactionary
Suicide 328
EPILOGUE
I Am We 332
xii
Illustrations
Following page 82
Grandmother Estella O'Neal
Walter and Armelia Newton
Huey P. Newton, 1945
Huey P. Newton, 1956
Lee Edward Newton and Walter Newton
Walter Newton, Jr.
Newton family
Huey P. Newton, 1959
Sister Leola with daughter
Melvin Newton
Following page 146
Richard Thome
Black Panther barbecue part}-, 1966
John Huggins
Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter
Huey P. Newton in emergency room of Kaiser Hospital
Huey P. Newton in Alameda County Jail
Poster of Huey P. Newton in shattered Black Panther
Part)' window
I ul I lilll.Hl!
, ,, „ |, , , „ mv unbracing Huey P- Newton after release
I i prison, 1970
| ]m ,y P. Newton embracing sister Doris after release
I Iuey P. Newton addressing crowd after release
Huev P. Newton at home
Alameda County Court House
Bobby Scale and Huey P. Newton
Following page 242
Huev P. Newton at seminar with Erik Erikson
Survival Program: sickle-cell anemia test
Survival Program: free breakfast for children
Survival Program: free shoes
Survival Program: child with chicken
Survival Program: free food baskets
Huey P. Newton and child at Survival Program
Black Panther children of the Samuel Napier
Intercommunal Youth Institute
Huev P. Newton and Bobby Scale after George Jackson
funeral
Coffin of George Jackson after funeral
Huey P. Newton and Shirley Chisholm
Huev P. Newton and Chou En-lai
Huey P. Newton
xiv
A MANIFESTO
Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let .1
bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second generation
full of courage issue forth, let a people loving freedom
come to growth, let a beauty full of healing and a strength
of final clenching be the pulsing in our spirits and our
blood. Let the martial songs be written, let the dirges dis-
appear. Let a race of men now rise and take control! "
Margaret walker, "For My People"
Revolutionary Suicide:
The Way of Liberation
For twenty-two months in the California Mens Colonv at San
Luis Ob.spo, after my first trial for the death of Patrolman John Frey
I w as almost continually in solitary confinement. There, in a four-bv-
s.x cell except for books and papers relating to my case. I was allowed
no reading material. Despite the rigid enforcement of this rule, inmates
sometimes slipped magazines under my door when the guards were not
looking. One that reached me was the May, 1970, issue of Ebony maga-
zme It contained an article written by Lacy Banko summarizing the
work of Dr. Herbert Hendin, who had done a comparative studv on
suicide among Black people in the major American cities. Dr. Hendin
found that the suicide rate among Black men between the ages of nine-
teen and thirty-five had doubled in the past ten to fifteen vears sur-
passing the rate for whites in the same age range. The article had-and
still has-a profound effect on me. I have thought long and hard about
its implications.
The Ebony article brought to mind Durkheim's classic study Suicide,
3
»'.. I I
. . „,.„ri 11 ,„„, »i suicide are related to ^1 -ond
,lul U., primary cause of suic.de i not ind
^ n , „, „„„,,,„ blU forces in the social environment In he
„ d,- is caused primarily by external factors not interna
" (UI ,ht about the conditions of Black people and about
', I; '„; i ! ' S 4. I began to develop Durkheinr's analysis and apply
i, ,„ th(! Black experience in the United States. Th.s eventually led
the concept of "revolutionary suicide. ^
To understand revolutionary suicide it is hrst necessar)
ld ea of reacHonary suicide, for the two are very Afferent H<**n
denied their right to live as proud and free human beings.
A s cH n in Dostoevski Cri™ fl nd Pigment provides a good
analo One f f the characters, Marmeladov, a very poor man argue
ha novertv is not a vice. In poverty, he says, a man can attain the
S5 nobility o, soul that is not ^ ^
^^^^.^^^rtl^^-ot^ demeaned, his di,
X lost Finally, bereft of se,f-res P ect, immobilized by fear and de-
snair he sinks into self-murder. This is reactionary suicide.
Connected to reactionary suicide, although even more pajnfu and
degrading is a spiritual death that has been the experience of milhon
o E ack people in the United States. This death is found everywhere
day in the Black community. Its victims have ceased to fight the
o ms oppression that drink their blood. The common attitude ha
loZ been What's the use? If a man rises up against a power as g a
"he United States, he will not survive. Believing thi, many B ack
have been driven to a death of the spirit rather than of the Hesn
aps ng into lives of quiet desperation. Yet all the while in the hear
S Black, there is the hope that life will somehow change in the
fUt 7do not think that life will change for the better -thout an assault
on the Establishment," which goes on exploiting the wretched of the
4
Revolutionary Suicide: The Way of Liberation
earth. This belief lies at the heart of the concept of revolution.!, v
suicide. Thus it is better to oppose the forces that would drive nie !o
self-murder than to endure them. Although I risk the likelihood
of death, there is at least the possibility, if not the probability, of chang-
ing intolerable conditions. This possibility is important, because much
in human existence is based upon hope without any real understanding
of the odds. Indeed, we are all— Black and white alike— ill in the same
way, mortally ill. But before we die, how shall we live? I say with hope
and dignity; and if premature death is the result, that death has a
meaning reactionary suicide can never have. It is the price of self-
respect.
Revolutionary suicide does not mean that I and my comrades have
a death wish; it means just the opposite. We have such a strong desire
to live with hope and human dignity that existence without them is
impossible. When reactionary forces crush us, we must move against
these forces, even at the risk of death. We will have to be driven out
with a stick.
Che Guevara said that to a revolutionary death is the reality and
victory the dream. Because the revolutionary lives so dangerouslv, his
survival is a miracle. Bakunin, who spoke for the most militant wing
of the First International, made a similar statement in his Revolution-
ary Catechism. To him, the first lesson a revolutionary must learn is
that he is a doomed man. Unless he understands this, he does not grasp
the essential meaning of his life.
When Fidel Castro and his small band were in Mexico preparing
for the Cuban Revolution, many of the comrades had little understand-
ing of Bakunin's rule. A few hours before they set sail, Fidel went
from man to man asking who should be notified in case of death.
Only then did the deadly seriousness of the revolution hit home. Their
struggle was no longer romantic. The scene had been exciting and
animated; but when the simple, overwhelming question of death arose,
everyone fell silent.
Many so-called revolutionaries in this country, Black and white, are
not prepared to accept this reality. The Black Panthers are not suicidal;
neither do we romanticize the consequences of revolution in our life-
time. Other so-called revolutionaries cling to an illusion that they might
have their revolution and die of old age. That cannot be.
I do not expect to live through our revolution, and most serious
comrades probably share my realism. Therefore, the expression "rev-
5
, !, l(ll s summing different to me than !t does
,, , who ii-.i ■ it- I think the revolution will grow m my hfe-
Jl.l M u,, to enjoy its fruits. That would be a contra-
i It* H i ill I ] if ' H '.U it V W ill be grimmer.
, , IV , , 10 dmlb t that the revolution will triumph. The people of the
will prevail, seize power, seize the means of production, w ip e out
,, u ,sm. capitalism, reactionary intercommunalism-reactionary ■ suicide
Tl people will win a new world. Yet when I think of individuals ■
the revolution. 1 cannot predict their survival. Revolutionaries must
accept this fact, especially the Black revolutionaries in America wh
lives are in constant danger from the evils of a colonial socie y. C on s d-
enn, how we must live, it is not hard to accept the concept of revo u
tionary suicide. In this we are different from white radicals. They are
not faced with genocide. ,
The greater, more immediate problem is the surviva of the en-
tire world. If the world does not change, all its people will be threat-
ened bv the greed, exploitation, and violence of the power structure
„ the American empire. The handwriting is on the wall. The United
ates is jeopardizing its own existence and the existence of all hu
ZL If American" knew the disasters that lay ahead, they wou d
transform this society tomorrow for their own preservation. The Black
I Party is in the vanguard of the revolution that seeks to relieve
fhis country" of its crushing burden of guilt. We are determined to
establish true equality and the means for creative work.
Some see our struggle as a symbol of the trend toward smc.de among
Blac s Scholars and academics, in particular, have been quick to make
fh s accusation. They fail to perceive differences. Jumping off a bndge
not the same as moving to wipe out the overwhelming force of an
opp ssive armv. When scholars call our actions suicidal, they should
bflogicallv consistent and describe all historical revolutionary move
Lnt in the same way. Thus the American colonists, the French of he
Ete eighteenth century, the Russians of 1917, the Jews of Warsaw, the
Cubans, the NLF, the North Vietnamese-any people w c , stri i g
aeainst a brutal and powerful force-are suicidal. Also if the Black
h rs symbolize the suicidal trend among Blacks then the whole
World is suicidal, because the Third World fully intends to re-
l and overcome the ruling class of the United States. If scholars w>sh
o ca rv their analysis further, they must come to terms with that four-
6
Revolutionary Suicide: The Way of Lihmilinn
fifths of the world which is bent on wiping out the power of the nnpi.r.
In those terms the Third World would be transformed from suicidal to
homicidal, although homicide is the unlawful taking of life, and the
Third World is involved only in defense. Is the coin then turned Is
the government of the United States suicidal? I think so.
With this redefinition, the term "revolutionary suicide" is not as
simplistic as it might seem initially. In coining the phrase, I took two
knowns and combined them to make an unknown, a neoteric phrase
in which the word "revolutionary" transforms the word "suicide" into
an idea that has different dimensions and meanings, applicable to a
new and complex situation.
My prison experience is a good example of revolutionary suicide
in action, for prison is a microcosm of the outside world. From the be-
ginning of my sentence I defied the authorities by refusing to co-
operate; as a result, I was confined to "lock-up," a solitary cell As the
months passed and I remained steadfast, they came to regard my be-
havior as suicidal. I was told that I would crack and break under the
strain. I did not break, nor did I retreat from my position. I grew
strong.
If I had submitted to their exploitation and done their will, it would
have killed my spirit and condemned me to a living death. To co-
operate in prison meant reactionary suicide to me. While solitary confine-
ment can be physically and mentally destructive, my actions were taken
with an understanding of the risk. I had to suffer through a certain
situation; by doing so, my resistance told them that I rejected all they
stood for. Even though my struggle might have harmed my health,
even killed me, I looked upon it as a way of raising the consciousness
of the other inmates, as a contribution to the ongoing revolution. Only-
resistance can destroy the pressures that cause reactionary suicide.
The concept of revolutionary suicide is not defeatist or fatalistic.
On the contrary, it conveys an awareness of reality in combination with
the possibility of hope— reality because the revolutionary must always
be prepared to face death, and hope because it symbolizes a resolute
determination to bring about change. Above all, it demands that the
revolutionary see his death and his life as one piece. Chairman Mao says
that death comes to all of us, but it varies in its significance: to die for
the reactionary is lighter than a feather; to die for the revolution is
heavier than Mount Tai.
7
Part One
During those long years in the Oakland public schools, I
did not have one teacher who taught me anything relevant
to my own life or experience.
1
Many migrants like us were driven and pursued, in the
manner of characters in a Greek play, down the paths of
defeat; but luck must have been with us, for we somehow
survived. . , .
Richard wbight, Preface to Black Metropolis
Starting Out
Life does not always begin at birth. My life was forged in the
lives of my parents before I was bom, and even earlier in the history
of all Black people. It is all of a piece.
I have little knowledge of my grandparents or those who went be-
fore. Racism destroyed our family history. My father's father was a
white rapist.
Both of my parents were born in the Deep South, my father in
Alabama, my mother in Louisiana. In the mid-thirties, their families
migrated to Arkansas, where my parents met and married. They were
very young, in their mid-teens — some said too young to marry — but mv
father, Walter Newton, is a very good talker, and when he decided he
wanted Armelia Johnson for his bride, she found him hard to resist.
He has always known how to be charming; even today I love to see his
eyes light up with that special glow when he gets ready to work his
magic. They were married in Parkdale, Arkansas, and lived there for
seven years before moving to Louisiana to take advantage of better
employment prospects.
My father was not typical of southern Black men in the thirties and
forties. Because of his strong belief in the family, my mother never
worked at an outside job, despite seven children and considerable eco-
11
|. , ».,,. ,,. t Mi |, u/r
.. ,,„, N , W(11U is rightly proud of his role as family
, ... „.,. .l.,-,,nv mother has never left her home to earn
">\. i ,,,„ . l.rli-ved ... work. He worked constantly, in a variety of
,„,, „ „,.,,h holding several at one time to provide for us. During those
! , ,/. hi Luimuma he worked in a gravel pit, a carbon plant in sugar-
,.. ,,„. .uills and sawmills. He eventually became a railroad brakeman for
„„■ Union Saw Mill Company. This pattern did not change when we
m0 ved to Oakland. As a youngster, I well remember my father leaving
„„e job in the afternoon, coming home for a while, then going to the
other. In spite of this, he always found time for his family. It was always
high-quality time when he was home.
In addition, mv father was a minister. He pastored the Bethel Bap-
tist Church in Monroe, Louisiana, and later assisted in several of the
Oakland churches. His preaching was powerful, if a little unusual The
Reverend Newton planned his sermons in advance and announced the
topic a week early, but he never seemed able to preach the sermon he
had chosen. Eventually, he adopted the practice of stepping right into
the pulpit and letting the spirit move him to deliver whatever message
was appropriate. As a child I swelled up proud to see him up there
leading church services, moving the congregation with his messages.
All of us shared the dignity and respect he commanded. Walter Newton
is not a particularly tall man, but when he stepped into that pulpit, he
was the biggest man in the world to me.
My mother likes to say that she married young and finished grow-
ing up with her children, and this is true. Only seventeen years separate
her from Lee Edward, the oldest child in the family. When my older
brothers and sisters were growing up in Louisiana, Mother was one of
their best playmates. She played ball, jackrocks, and hide-and-go-seek^
Sometimes mv father joined in, rolling tires and shooting marbles and
keeping the rules straight. This sense of family fun and participation
has helped to keep us close. My parents are more than the word us-
uallv implies; thev are also our friends and companions.
My mother's sense of humor affected all of us. It was pervasive, an
attitude toward life that led us to insight, affection, humor, and under-
standing with each other. She helped us to see the light side in even
the most difficult situations. This lightness and balance have carried
me through some difficult days. Often, when others expect to find me
12
Starting Out
depressed by difficult circumstances, and especially by the extreme con-
dition of prison, they see that I look at things in another wav. Not that
I am happy with the suffering; I simply refuse to be defeated by it.
I was born in Monroe, Louisiana, on February 17, 1942, the last
of seven children. Like other Black people of that time and place, I
was born at home. They tell me that my mother was quite sick while
she carried me, but Mother says only that I was a fine and pretty baby.
My brothers and sisters must have agreed because they often teased
me when I was young, telling me I was too pretty to be a bov, that I
should have been a girl. This baby-faced appearance dogged me for a
long time, and it was one of the reasons I fought so often in school, I
looked younger than I actually was, and soft, which encouraged school-
mates to test me. I had to show them. When I went to jail in 1968,
I still had the baby face. Until then I rarely shaved.
My parents named me after Huey Pierce Long, the former Governor
of Louisiana, assassinated seven years before I came along. Even though
he could not vote, my father had a keen interest in politics and followed
the campaigns carefully. Governor Long had impressed him by his
ability to talk one philosophy while carrying out programs that moved
Louisiana in exactly the opposite direction. My father says he was
up front, "looking right into his mouth," when Huey P. Long made
a speech about how Black men in the hospitals, "out of their minds
and half naked," had to be cared for by white nurses. This was, of
course, unacceptable to southern whites, and therefore a number of
Black nurses were recruited to work in Louisiana hospitals. This was
a major breakthrough in employment opportunities for Black profes-
sionals. Huey Long used this tactic to bring other beneficial programs
to Blacks: free books in the schools, free commodities for the poor,
public road- and bridge-construction projects that gave Blacks em-
ployment. While most whites were blinded by Long's outwardlv racist
philosophy, many Blacks found their lives significantly improved. My
father believed that Huey P. Long had been a great man, and he
wanted to name a son after him.
In our family there was a tradition that each older child had par-
ticular responsibility for a younger one, looking after him at play, feed-
ing him, taking him to school. This was called "giving" the newborn to
an older brother or sister. The older child had the privilege of first
13
M /■
i ,,. unl(U<oi», 1 was "given" to my brother Walter,
(i \ ii l, . itlfi I was horn he took me outside, hauled me up
l!i< I i. ' >i| .1 horse, and circled the house while the rest of the
i i (nil 1 Tim ritual is undoubtedly a surviving "Africanism"
hum (In ii'/' ulil matriarchal-communal tradition. I do not remember
thiil hi iiiivlliing else of our life in Louisiana. Everything I know about
dial I i list' 1 learned from the family. In 1945, we followed my father
in Oakland when he came West to look for work in the wartime in-
dustries. I was three years old.
The great exodus of poor people out of the South during World
War II sprang from the hope for a better life in the big cities of the
North and West. In search of freedom, they left behind centuries of
southern cruelty and repression. The futility of that search is now his-
tory. The Black communities of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Newark, Browns-
ville, Watts, Detroit, and many others stand as testament that racism
is as oppressive in the North as in the South.
Oakland is no different. The Chamber of Commerce boasts about
Oakland's busy seaport, its museum, professional baseball and foot-
ball teams, and the beautiful sports coliseum. The politicians speak of
an efficient city government and the well-administered poverty pro-
gram. The poor know better, and they will tell you a different story.
Oakland has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country,
and for the Black population it is even higher. This was not always the
case. After World War I, there was a hectic period of industrial expan-
sion, and again during World War II, when government recruiters went
into the South and encouraged thousands of Blacks to come to Oakland
to work in the shipyards and wartime industries. They came — and
stayed after the war, although there were few jobs and they were no
longer wanted, Because of the lack of employment opportunities in
Oakland today, the number of families on welfare is the second highest
in California, even though the city is the fifth largest in the state. The
police department has a long history of brutality and hatred of Blacks.
Twenty-five years ago official crime became so bad that the California
state legislature investigated the Oakland force and found corruption
so pervasive that the police chief was forced to resign and one police-
man was tried and sentenced to jail. The Oakland "system" has not
changed since then. Police brutality continues and corruption persists.
Not everyone in Oakland will admit this, particularly the power
14
Starting Out
structure and the privileged white middle class. But, then, none of them
actually lives in Oakland.
Oakland spreads from the northern border of Berkeley, dominated
by the University of California with its liberal to radical life style,
south to the Port of Oakland and Jack London Square, a complex of
mediocre motels, novelty shops, and restaurants with second-rate food.
To the west, eight miles across the bay, spanned by the San Francisco-
Oakland Bay Bridge, is metropolitan San Francisco; to the east is a
lily-white bedroom city called San Leandro.
There are two very distinct geographic Oaklands, the "flatlands"
and the hills. In the lulls, and the rich area known as Piedmont, the
upper-middle and upper class — the bosses of Oakland — live, among
them former United States Senator William Knowland, the owner of
the ultraconservative Oakland Tribune, Oakland's only newspaper. His
neighbors include the mayor, the district attorney, and other wealthy
white folks, who live in big houses surrounded by green trees and
high fences.
The other Oakland — the flatlands — consists of substandard-income
families that make up about 50 per cent of the population of nearly
450,000. They live in either rundown, crowded West Oakland or dilapi-
dated East Oakland, hemmed in block after block, in ancient, decaying
structures, now cut up into multiple dwellings. Here the majoritv of
Blacks, Chicanos, and Chinese people struggle to survive. The land-
scape of East and West Oakland is depressing; it resembles a crumbling
ghost town, but a ghost town with inhabitants, among them more than
200,000 Blacks, nearly half the city's population. There is a dreary, grey-
monotony about Oakland's flatlands, broken only by a few large and
impressive buildings in the downtown section, among them (signifi-
cantly) the Alameda County Court House (which includes a jail) and
the Oakland police headquarters building, a ten-story streamlined for-
tress for which no expense was spared in its construction. Oakland is
a ghost town in the sense that many American cities are. Its white
middle class has fled to the hills, and their indifference to the plight of
the city's poor is everywhere evident.
Like countless other Black families in the forties and fifties, we fell
victim to this indifference and corruption when we moved to Oakland.
It was as difficult then as it is now to find decent homes for large
families, and we moved around quite a bit in my early years in search
15
Ml I / Ir/f
i .. . ||, ,i umhM miiI Dili :n-''ds The first house I remember was
. .i ,.| l-'ilth ,unl Brush streets in a rundown section of Oak-
i n • , , iwii lii'iiroum basement apartment, and much too small
hi hdtil iiii nl us I'oinlortably. The Soor was either dirt or cement, I
, ,, 'member exactly; it did not seem to be the kind of floor that
'n i4nl.ii" people had in their homes. My parents slept in one bedroom
,uiil m\ sisters, brothers, and I in the other. Later, when we moved to
,i (wo room apartment at Castro and Eighteenth streets, there were
fewer of us. Myrtle and Leola had married, and Walter had been
drafted into the Army. On Castro Street, I slept in the kitchen. That
memory returns often. Whenever I think of people crowded into a
small living space, I always see a child sleeping in the kitchen and feel-
ing upset about it; everybody knows that the kitchen is not supposed to
be a bedroom. That is all we had, however. I still burn with the sense
of unfairness I felt every night as I crawled into the cot near the ice-
box.
We were very poor, but I had no idea what that meant. They were
happy times for me. Even though we were discriminated against and
segregated into a poor community with substandard living conditions,
I never felt deprived when I was small. I had a close, strong family
and many playmates, including my brother Melvin, who was four
years older than me; nothing else was needed. We just lived and played,
enjoying everything to the fullest, particularly the glorious California
weather, which is kind to the poor.
Unlike many others I knew, we never went hungry, although our
food was the food of the poor. Cush was standard fare. Cush is made
out of day-old corn bread mixed with other leftovers, such as gravy and
onions, spiced very heavily and fried in a skillet. Sometimes we ate
cush twice a day, because that was all we had. It was one of my favorite
dishes, and I looked forward to it. Now I see that cush was not
verv nutritious and was downright bad for you if you ate it often;
it is just bread — corn bread.
Life grew even sweeter when I was big enough— six or seven years
old-to play outdoors with Melvin. Our games were filled with the joy
and exuberance of innocent children, but even they reflected our eco-
nomic circumstances. We rarely had store-bought toys. We improvised
with the materials at hand. Rats were close at hand, and we hated rats
because they infested our homes; one had almost bitten off my
nephew's toe. Partly because of the hate and partly for the game of it,
16
Starting Out
we caught rats and put them in a large can and poured coal oil into the
can, then lighted it. The whole can would go up in flames while we
watched the rats scoot around inside, trying to escape the fire, their
tails sticking straight up like smoking grey toothpicks. Usually they
died from the smoke before the flames consumed them.
W e also despised cats, because we were told that cats killed little
babies by sucking the breath out of them. We tested the tale about
cats always landing on their feet. When we caught cats and took them
to the top of the stairs and hurled them down, they would land on
their feet — most of the time.
Dirt was a favorite toy. We used it to play at being builders. The
roof of the house was our building site. We would climb up there and
pull up the dirt-filled buckets behind us with rope, hand over hand, to
the top of the house, and then dump the dirt down on the other side.
There were no swimming pools near us, but when we got a little older
we began to wander down to the bay with the other kids and go swim-
ming off the pier in the dirty water. Dirt, rats, cats: these are the
games and toys of the poor, as old and cruel as economic reality.
My parents insisted that we learn to get along with each other.
When there was a dispute, my father never took sides. He was always
an impartial judge, listening to both parties and getting to the bottom
of things before making a decision. He was a fair and careful judge
about all disputes, and later, when we had trouble in school, my father
went every time to the teacher or the principal to learn what had hap-
pened. When we were right, he stood up for us, but he never tolerated
wrongdoing.
We were not taught to fight by our parents, although my father in-
sisted that we stand our ground when attacked. He told us never to
start a fight, but once in it to stand fast until the end.
This was how we grew up — in a close family with a proud, strong,
protective father and a loving, joyful mother. No wonder we came to
feel that all our needs— from religion to friendship to entertainment-
were met within the family circle. There was no felt need for outside
friends; we were such good friends with each other,"
In this way the days of our childhood slipped past. We shared the
° Even today my entire family lives in the San Francisco Bay area, close to our
parents. Any disagreements among us are still taken to our parents for arbitration.
When one member of the family entertains, most of the guests are other family
members. Outsiders are rarely included in such gatherings.
17
:, ... i .11,, i mm, i n , in children. In our innocence we planned to be
i , I,, ,,, plni',, boxers, and builders. How could we know then
i],„i , u,i I'uinii anywhere? Nothing in our experience had
in, ,,,,.•,,! ili.it I In' American dream was not for us. We, too, had
j-n-.il , >,]it'i.'iati(jns, Arid then we went to school.
18
2
The clash of cultures in the classroom is essentially a class
war, a socio-economic and racial warfare being waged on
the battleground of our schools, with middle-class aspiring
teachers provided with a powerful arsenal of half-truths,
prejudices, and rationalizations, arrayed against hopelessly
outclassed working-class youngsters. This is an uneven bal-
ance, particularly since, like most battles, it comes under
the guise of righteousness.
kenneth clark, Dark Ghetto
Losing
Because we moved around a lot when I was growing up, I at-
tended almost every grammar and junior high school in the city of
Oakland and had wide experience with the kind of education Oakland
offers its poor people.
At the time, I did not understand the size or seriousness of the
school system's assault on Black people. I knew only that I constantly
felt uncomfortable and ashamed of being Black. This feeling followed
me everywhere, without letup. It was a result of the implicit under-
standing in the system that whites were "smart" and Blacks were
"stupid." Anything presented as "good" was always white, even the
stories teachers gave us to read in the early grades. Little Black Sambo,
Little Red Riding Hood, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs told us
what we were.
I remember my reaction to Little Black Sambo. Sambo was, Srst of
all, a coward. When confronted by the tigers, he gave up the presents
from his father without a struggle — first the umbrella, then the beauti-
19
' I'MllH/ 'Mil. flA
111 .... ;. )i in. .] | s, .•wtvtliing, until he had nothing left. And
■ Hi i .1 S mil 'mited wily to cat pancakes. He was totally unlike
n, wh,u- kuinht who rescued Sleeping Beaut}-. The knight
ii miiI. 11] til purity, while Sambo stood for humiliation and glut-
i.i.m' I imr r time, we heard the story of Little Black Sambo. We
iliil n.. I wiiisi Id laugh, but finally we did, to hide our shame, accepting
' In! ,i\ a symbol of what Blackness was all about.
As I suffered through Sambo and the Black Tar Baby story in Brer
Rabbit in the early grades, a great weight began to settle on me. It
was the weight of ignorance and inferiority imposed by the system. I
found myself wanting to identify with the white heroes in the primers
and in the movies I saw, and in time I cringed at the mention of Black.
This created a gulf of hostility between the teachers and me, a lot of
it repressed, but still there, like the strange mixture of hate and ad-
miration we Blacks felt toward whites generally.
We simply did not feel capable of learning what the white kids
could learn. From the beginning, everyone — including us — judged
smart Blacks in terms of how they compared with whites, whether they
could read or do arithmetic as well as the white kids. Whites were the
standard of comparison in all things, even personal attractiveness. Bushy-
African hair was bad; straight hair was good; light was better than
dark. Our image of ourselves was defined for us by textbooks and
teachers. We not only accepted ourselves as inferior; we accepted the
inferiority as inevitable and inescapable.
By the third or fourth grade, when we began to do simple mathe-
matics, I had learned to maneuver my way around the teachers. It was
a simple matter to put pressure on the. white kids to do my arithmetic
and spelling assignments. The feeling that we could not learn this
material was a general attitude among Black children in every public
school I ever attended. Predictably, this sense of despair and futility
led us into rebellious attitudes. Bebellion was the only way we
knew to cope with the suffocating, repressive atmosphere that under-
mined our confidence.
Of all the unpleasant things that happened to me in elementary
school, I remember two in particular. I had disciplinary problems from
the beginning, plenty of them, but often they were not my fault. For
instance, in the fifth grade at Lafayette Elementary School (I was
eleven) I had an old white lady for a teacher. I have forgotten her
20
Losing
name, but not her stern, disapproving face. Thinking once that I was
not paying attention, she called me to the front of the room and point-
edly told the class that I was misbehaving because I was stupid. She
would show them just how stupid I was. Handing me a piece of chalk,
she told me to write the word "business" on the blackboard. Now, I
knew how to spell the word; I had written it many times before, and I
knew I was not stupid. However, when I walked to the board and
tried to write, I froze, unable to form even the first letter. Inside I knew
she was wrong, but how could I prove it to her? I resolved the situ-
ation by walking out of the room without a word.
This happened to me time and again, growing worse with repetition.
When I was asked to read aloud in class or spell a word, my mind went
blank and cold. Everybody thought I was dumb, I suppose, but I knew
it was the lock inside my head. I had lost the key. Even now, when I
read to a group of people, I am likely to stumble,
The other incident also happened at Lafayette. The school had a
rule that you could dump the sand out of your shoes after a recess, just
before you sat down. One day I was sitting on the floor, dumping the
sand from each shoe. I had quite a bit of sand, and dumping it took
time, too much for the teacher, who came up behind me and slapped
me across the ear with a book, accusing me of deliberately delaying the
class. Without thinking, I threw the shoe at her. She headed for the
door at a good clip and made it through just in front of my other one.
Of course I was sent to the principal, but I received a great deal of
respect from the other children for that act; they backed me for re-
sisting unjust authority, In our working- and lower-class community we
valued the person who successfully bucked authority. Group prestige
and acceptance were won through defiance and physical strength, and
both of them led to racial and class conflict between the authorities and
the students.
The only teacher with whom I never had trouble was Mrs. Mc-
Laren, who taught me sixth grade at Santa Fe Elementary School. She
had also taught my brother Melvin several years earlier, and since he
was a model student, Mrs. McLaren expected a lot of me. I felt, in turn,
a responsibility to live up to Melvin's reputation. Mrs. McLaren never
raised her voice. She was a tranquil person, at ease and peaceful, no
matter what was happening, Nobody wanted to start a fight with her.
She was the exception to the rule.
21
/In lull, .11.(11/ '.Ml, *./r
ii i veil 111 die sixth grade — I had such a tough
■ i il il ■ i i llvrr was no need to start fights with the instruc-
1 i I li'-v Wir* Wtiting For me and often provoked trouble, thinking
I mile! I'uli nomptlling ;mvway, even when I was going along with
Hii [ii.i 'i.iin
I ivi'iii iliiDiigh a series of conversions and lapses. Each suspension
Ktmi^li! :i strong lecture from my parents, followed by a week or so of
fie.tvy snu] searching and a decision to co-operate with the teachers
;md give my best effort. Mother and Father argued that the instructors
had something I needed and that I could not expect to go into the
class as an equal, I would return to school full of firm and good in-
tentions; then, invariably, the instructors would provoke me, thinking
I was there to continue the struggle. Sharp words, a fight, expulsion,
and another semester down the drain. It often seemed that they simply
wanted me out of the classroom.
During those long years in the Oakland public schools, I did not
have one teacher who taught me anything relevant to my own life or
experience. Not one instructor ever awoke in me a desire to learn more
or question or explore the worlds of literature, science, and history. All
they did was try to rob me of the sense of my own uniqueness and
worth, and in the process they nearly killed my urge to inquire.
22
3
He who would be free must strike the first blow.
Frederick douglass, My Bondage
and My Freedom
Growing
Throughout my life all real learning has taken place outside
school. I was educated by my family, my friends, and the street. Later,
I learned to love books and I read a lot, but that had nothing to do
with school. Long before, I was getting educated in unorthodox ways.
One of the first things any Black child must learn is how to fight
well. My father taught us to play fair, and when I started school^ I
tried to follow his advice. His principles of justice did not prevail every-
where, however. Some games ended in fights, and at the time I did not
like to fight. My first year of school, kindergarten, was tough. I devel-
oped a habit of feigning sickness so that I would not have to face some
of the local bullies. When the sick excuse failed, I "lost" my clothes and
took a long time to dress. My mother saw through these'excuses, and
when she learned why I was avoiding school, she had my brother
Walter, Jr. (Sonny Man), take me. Eventually, I began to stand my
ground when others wanted to fight, and the trouble stopped, because
Walter taught me how to fight and fight well.
All of us at that time, around 1950, thought Joe Louis was a saint;
he and Jersey Joe, Kid Gavilan, and Sugar Ray were our pantheon. I
wanted to be a fighter, too, which seemed possible because I had the
fastest hands on the block. Other boys assumed nicknames— Winches-
ter, Duke, Count— but Huey was name enough for me. I beat up all
the kids on the block, not to be a bully, but to protect my dignity and
23
,i i«< ■ I I \\«-.r ijjrJifs stemmed from my middle initial. The
. iln 1 1 r l [ 1 1 1 ',.iv it, Huey I', Newton became Huey "Pee" Newton,
mil ■ I lie. me e;m>e ul me like "Huey P. goes wee, wee, wee," I
I llnnwitiK luuds until it stopped. It got so bad for a while that
I ■• ..iid >1 in Minplify life by dropping the middle initial, but my mother
Ill IKlt le) IMC.-..
( >u the streets we had our little boxing matches. We wrapped towels
around our hands for gloves and went five rounds while the winos
Itood iU'Oimd betting nickels and urging us on. They loved the blood,
and we gave it to them. We would be in there swinging, bleeding, and
crving — really slugging each other. The winos called me "prize fighter."
Because I thought a prize fighter received a prize when the battle was
over, they sometimes bought me a ten-cent box of Cracker Jack, and I
took the prize out of that — the only prize I ever knew. We could hardly
eat the Cracker Jack our mouths were so bloody. I never thought of
fighting in terms of money.
Later, I trained with Walter at the Campbell Street Center and had
a few bouts at the Boys Club. My oldest brother, Lee Edward, had
already left home by the time I began to grow up, but he often came
by the house to see the family. He taught me a lot about fighting,
too. Lee Edward had a big reputation in the community as a man who
never lost a fight; any boy of that time would have been as proud as I
was to have a brother known to defend himself in all circumstances.
Even though he lived "on the block" and saw some rough times, he
never stepped aside for anybody. More than anyone else, he taught me
to persist in the face of bad odds, always to look an adversary
straight in the eye, and to keep moving forward. Even if you were
hurled back three or four times, he said, eventually you would prevail.
He was right.
Fighting has always been a big part of my life, as it is in the lives
of most poor people. Some find this hard to understand. I was too
young to realize that we were really trying to affirm our masculinity
and dignity, and using force in reaction to the social pressures exerted
against us. For a proud and dignified people fighting was one way to
resist dehumanization. You learn a lot about yourself when you fight.
Fighting is not just a means of survival; it is also a part of friend-
ship, All the time I was growing up, fighting was an essential aspect of
camaraderie on the block. It took many forms: you fought your friends.
24
Growing
or with your friends you fought an outside aggressor. If the neighbor-
hood boasted a good fighter, word got around. That was how I first
heard of David Hilliard, now a member of the Black Panther Part)'.
David was no bully; he never looked for trouble, but when attacked, he
had great courage. He had won renown in our neighborhood as a brave
adversary who never backed down. That is one of the qualities I have
always admired most in him, and the bond that was formed then,
eighteen years ago, has held.
I was thirteen years old and just out of elementary school the sum-
mer I met David. My family had just moved to North Oakland, where
we were at last able to buy a house. David, who had come to Oakland
from Alabama not long before, lived down the block from us. We soon
became close friends. My parents were very fond of him, and eventually
he became like one of the family. We have often wondered whether we
may not be kin to one another, since my paternal grandmother was a
Hilliard from Alabama.
David was the constant companion of my early teens, sharing with
me all the usual activities of adolescents. Sometimes we spent whole
days together, listening to records and rapping. Singing groups were
very popular then. I could not sing, and still cannot, but David sings
well, and he and some of his friends — Joe, Snake, and Early — had a
group that practiced every day one summer, hoping to hit it big. An-
other interest we shared was girls, Some very pretty girls lived next
door to David, which made the Hilliard house a popular gathering
place.
The fall after we met, both of us started junior high school at
Woodrow Wilson. Among our friends there was a pretty girl named
Patricia Parks, whom I had known for some time. The truth is, I
think I terrified her. When I came on the scene, she would disappear.
But when I introduced her to David, they hit it off right away, and
later were married. Patricia is not terrified of me any more.
David was part of my education. He still is. The steadfastness of our
relationship cannot be put into words. Although we have been friends
for eighteen years and have been in many fights together against others,
we have never quarreled or had a serious disagreement. We are dif-
ferent in many ways, but we respect each other's differences.
Another good friend in junior high was James Crawford. He was
a couple of years older than me, but behind in school, James and I used
25
Hi i i i'h' i. in if l) '■lid till'
• i !.• . h ilir-j . i..l!,iis',i"it «mr day and coming together again
ii. i i lit . i iiiM brut up most boys in the school, including me, and
In titVBf Wt fougli). 1 WOitld lose, but I always came back with some
' , ■! I ■ .(ii lii.'i'i ,i UiM'ball bat or a short piece of rubber hose with a
in. hi! nr. ill. llr had to give me respect, because even when he beat
inc I would crime back to him. James and I stopped fighting each other
1 1 1 I'J.i.'i, when we formed a gang called the Brotherhood, which eventu-
,illv numbered thirty or forty regular members, all of them seventh-
ami eighth-grade Black boys. Another gang of ninth-graders were our
allies. Crawford and I were the leaders. The Brotherhood (one of the
few gangs in North Oakland) was a direct response to white aggression
at school. At that time, Blacks were a small minority at Woodrow Wil-
son, and all the Blacks there viewed each other as blood relations. We
called ourselves brothers or cousins and banded together to fight racist
students, faculty, and administration. Back then, white staff people and
students routinely called Blacks "niggers," and tension was high.
Black students stuck together on the playground, too. We had out-
grown hide-and-go-seek, king-of-the-mountain, and ring-a-levio, but
our games still reflected our poverty. We spent hours rolling dice and
pitching and flipping pennies. Since none of us ever had enough money
to buy lunch or even milk, we gambled for these things. We also played
what some kids called "capping" or the "dozens." This is a game of
verbal assault, in which kids insult each other by talking about sexual
liberties they have taken with the opponent's mother. It is a very
common game in the Black community. My contests would often end in
fights because I was no good at putting people in the dozens. In the
mornings David and I often talked about how to "cap" Crawford. But
when we got to school, Crawford usually outcapped us. A typical
dozens from Crawford might go like this: "Motorcycle, motorcycle, go-
ing so fast; your mother's got a pussy like a bulldog's ass." They were
just words, and we were good friends in spite of it, really "tight part-
ners."
My years in junior high were a repeat of elementary school. The
teachers attempted to embarrass and humiliate me, and I countered de-
fiantly to protect my dignity. While I did not see it at the time, fierce
pride was at the bottom of my resistance. These struggles had the same
result: I continued to be suspended from school. My parents, the princi-
pal, and the counselor lectured me for hours, and I would again make
26
up my mind to knuckle under and go along. As soon as I hit the class-
room, however, there would be another provocation, another visit with
the principal, and back on the streets again. It was a kind of revolving
door: each week things were the same.
The one class I took in junior high school that was not painful was a
cooking class taught by the only Black teacher I had in all my years at
school — Miss Cook. There was a reason for my taking this class. Most
of the white kids had money to buy their lunch, but my family could
not afford that. Since I was too proud to bring my lunch in a brown
paper bag, and be ridiculed by my friends, I took cooking — and eating.
It was either that, or gambling, or stealing from the white kids.
Crawford and I were in the same class, and we were always getting
kicked out together. I remember clearly one of the teachers at Woodrow
Wilson — Mrs. Gross, We had her three periods every day in what was
called the dumb class; only Blacks were in it. We spent each day
gambling and poking each other and generally raising hell. Crawford
would shoot a rubber band at me, or I would slap him on the head, and
then we would fight, and Mrs. Gross would kick us out. Sometimes she
sent us to the principal's office, and sometimes she told us to stand in
the hall. When you were booted from one of her classes, vou were out
for the whole day. It was a form of liberation — liberation from the
dumb class.
Her class was particularly bad during reading sessions. We hated
being there to begin with, because we were not interested in what
Mrs. Gross was saying. When the reading-aloud sessions came, we were
frantic to get out. We could not read, and we did not want the rest
of the class to know it. The funny thing is that most of the others could
not read, either. Still, you did not want them to know it.
At that time, and earlier, I associated reading with being an adult:
when I became an adult, I would automatically be able to read, too.
It was a skill that people naturally acquired in the process of matura-
tion. Anyhow, why should I want to read when all they gave us were
irrelevant and racist stories? Refusing to learn became a matter of de-
fiance, a way of preserving whatever dignity I could hold onto in an
oppressive svstem.
Therefore, when it was time for Crawford or me to read, we made a
conscious effort to get kicked out of class, and were usually successful.
Then we would sneak out of the school and steal a bottle of wine or
27
fli i t'liittouiiut Slid li/f
mil i i! ■ • i" nut' nl mil p. ulnars' houses and while away the day
pin „„■ I Liilt-r. ullrr school let out in the afternoon, we often
in ,1 , .1 iiiIm ihi' movies with other kids or went to David's house and
li \i-\u i\ in ii'. mils mid danced with the girls.
I In', is, [lirtty much the way things went all during junior high. On
Mir surliK'f, mv record was dismal. Yet those years were not significantly
ililliTcjit from the adolescence of many Blacks. We went to school and
got kicked out. We drifted into patterns of petty delinquency. We were
not necessarily criminally inclined, but we were angry. We did not
feel that stealing a bottle of wine or "cracking" parking meters was
wrong. We were getting back at the people who made us feel small
and insignificant at a time when we needed to feel important and hope-
ful. We struck out at those who trampled our dreams.
James Crawford had his dreams. He dreamed of becoming a great
singer. There were days when Melvin and I sat listening for hours while
James sang in his beautiful tenor voice. He was also a good cook and
dreamed of opening a restaurant. James Crawford was talented, but
the educational system and his psychological scars held him back. He
never learned to read. To this day he cannot read. His fear of failure
was reinforced rather than helped by those charged with his education,
and his dreams slipped away. As he became more fearful and frustrated
with each passing year, James was finally expelled from school as an
"undesirable." Gradually, he sank into alcoholism and has been in and
out of state mental hospitals since our school years. His face is scarred
where the police beat him.
That is the story of my friend James Crawford; another dream blown
to hell.
25
4
The glory of my boyhood years was my father . , . there
was no hint of servility in my father's make-up. Just as in
youth he had refused to remain a slave, so in all the years
of his manhood he disdained to be an Uncle Tom. From
him we learned, and never doubted it, that the Negro was
in every way equal to the white man. And we fiercely
resolved to prove it.
paul robeson, Here I Stand
Changing
Hope has always been a scarce commodity in the Black com-
munity. Claude Brown, who grew up in Harlem, has written of this
in Manchild in the Promised Land. When he returned to Harlem after
an absence of four years, he had a hard time finding many of the
friends he had grown up with. "It seemed as though most of the cats
that we'd come up with just hadn't made it," he says. "Almost every-
body was dead or in jail," Many young Black men in our generation
can say the same thing. Drugs, oppression, and despair take their toll.
Survival is not a simple matter or something to be taken for granted.
When I look back on my early years, I see how lucky I was. Strong
and positive influences in my life helped me escape the hopelessness
that afflicts so many of my contemporaries. First, there was mv father,
who gave me a strong sense of pride and self-respect. Second, my
brother Melvin awakened in me the desire to learn, and, third, because
of him, I began to read. What I discovered in books led me to think, to
question, to explore, and finally to redirect my life. Numerous other
factors influenced me— my mother and the rest of my family, my ex-
periences on the street, my friends, and even religion in a peculiar
29
"'•".fl.l ' ■ "'■
, ,,. ,)„,.,. .,,„! ,,it>M ol :iU my father— helped me to develop
,,1,1
WIkmi I >„iV Mini iny lather was unusual, I mean that he had a dignity
1 111M |, M'l.IiJin seen in southern Black men. Although many other
111,,, ]. n in the South had a similar strength, they never let it show
,„,,„.,(] whites.. To do so was to take your life in your hands. My
fallicr never kept his strength from anybody.
Traditionally, southern Black women have always had to be careful
about how they bring up their sons. Through generations, Black mothers
have tried to curb the natural masculine aggressiveness in their young
male children, lest this quality bring swift reprisal, or even death, from
the white community. My father was never subjected to this pressure,
or, if he was, he chose to ignore it. He somehow managed to grow up
with all his pride and dignity intact. As an adult he never let a white
man humiliate him or any member of his family; he kept his wife at
home, even though whites in Monroe, Louisiana, felt she should be
working in their kitchens, and made that plain to him. He never yielded,
always maintaining his stand as a strong protector, and he never hesi-
tated to speak up to a white man. When we children were small, my
father entertained us with stories of his encounters with whites. He has
not been well for the past few years, but even now, as he tells these
stories, the old strength surges through him again. None of us realized
it then, but those stories were more than simple entertainment; he was
teaching us how to be men.
One time in Louisiana he got into an argument with a young white
man for whom he was working. The disagreement had to do with some
detail about the job, and the white man became angry when my father
stood his ground. He told my father that when a colored man disputed
his word, he whipped him. My father replied just as firmly that no man
whipped him unless he was a better man, and he doubted that the
white man qualified. This shocked the white man, and confused him, so
that he backed down by calling my father crazy. The story spread
quickly around town; my father became known as a "crazy man" be-
cause he would not give in to the harassment of whites. Strangely, this
"crazy" reputation meant that whites were less likely to bother him.
That is often the way of the oppressor. He cannot understand the simple
fact that people want to be free. So, when a man resists oppression,
they pass it off by calling him "crazy" or "insane." My father was called
30
C flanging
"crazy" for his refusal to let a white man call him "nigger" or to play
the Uncle Tom or allow whites to bother his family. "Crazy" to them,
he was a hero to us.
He even stood up to white men when they were armed. One eve-
ning, as he rode home from work with some other Black men, for some
reason they stopped their car in front of a white man's house and began
to talk and laugh. They did not see the white woman on the front
porch, but pretty soon a white man came out of the house with an ax
and yelled at them for laughing at his sister. The driver panicked and
drove off. When they reached the corner, my father made him stop.
He climbed out and walked back alone. The white man was advancing
down the road with the ax. My father asked him why he had come out
with that ax and what he had in mind to do with it. The white man
passed off the incident lightly by saying something about "you know
how these southern women can be," and how he had to make a show
to satisfy his sister. My father realized that in the etiquette of southern
race relations this was an apology. He accepted it, but not before he
made it clear to the white man that he would not be threatened.
He never hesitated to make his view known to anyone who would
listen. Once, when he felt cheated by a white man, he let all the town
know what had happened. The man heard the stories and came to our
house to see my father. This white man carried a gun in the glove com-
partment of his car. My father knew that, but he nevertheless went out-
side unarmed to talk. He maneuvered around to the right side of the
car, and sat on the running board with the white man in front of him
so that he could not get to the gun. Then he told the white man what
he thought of him and said, "If you hit me a lick, the other folks will
have to hunt me down because you'll be lying here in the road dead."
The white man drove off, and my father heard no more about it.
Another time some whites invited him to go hunting. To this day
I do not know why they asked him, They all took their shotguns.
Knowing my father was a preacher, they tried to goad him into a dis-
cussion about the Bible and the origin of man. Adam and Eve were
surely white, they said, so where did Black people come from? Their
convenient interpretation was that Blacks must have sprung from the
union of Adam and a gorilla. My father countered by saying that Adam
must have been a low-life white man to have had sex with a gorilla.
At this, the situation grew fairly tense, but nothing came of it.
31
li' Vi'lMi in, '.«<. !<<•■
II, in fended lo every member of our family. At the age
..I mi v «M«*1 brother, Lee Edward, went to work with my father
in ,, m>k.ii ' mill. The first step in the sugar-cane process was to feed
..talks mtu a jjiisoline-powered grinder. The grinder never stopped,
,„„! ,i Liiid to be kept full or it would burn out. This was Lee Edward's
job. They had cut the engine down some in the hope that Lee Edward
eould run it, but he got tired his first day in the mill, and about eleven
o'clock, after four hours on the job, he could not keep the machine
full. It ran down and burned out. When the owner saw this, he began
yelling at Lee Edward, but before he could say much, my father was
right there. This white man was over six feet tall and weighed 200
pounds, but my father got right in the middle of it. He shut off the
motor and told the owner it took a grownup to keep cane in the mill.
My father took Lee Edward off the job after that. He wanted us to be
good workers, just as he was, but he also wanted us to grow up proud.
I heard these stories and others like them over and over again until
in a way his experiences became my own. Anyone who tried to bother
us. Black or white, had to contend with my father, It made no differ-
ence that the South did not tolerate such behavior from Blacks. My
father stood up to the white South until the day he left for California.
He has never returned.
The fact that my father survived these encounters may go deeper
than a simple white defense mechanism. His blood was, after all, half
white, and that same blood flowed in the veins of other local people-
in his father, his cousins, aunts, and uncles. While local whites were
willing enough to shed the blood of Black people, it may be that they
were afraid of being haunted by the murder of another "white." Statis-
tics bear this out. The history of lynching in the South shows that
Blacks of mixed blood had a much higher chance of surviving racial
oppression than their all-Black brothers.
In any case, my father's pride meant that the threat of death was
always there; yet it did not destroy his desire to be a man, to be free.
Now I understand that because he was a man he was also free, and
he was able to pass this freedom on to his children. No matter how
much society tried to steal our self-esteem, we survived on what we
got from him. It was the greatest possible gift. All else stems from that.
This strong sense of self-worth created a closeness among us and
a sense of responsibility for each other. Since I was the youngest in the
32
family, all the other children had a deep influence on me, but particu-
larly my three brothers. Of the three, it was Melvin who opened
up most decisively the possibilities for intellectual growth and a spe-
cial kind of self-realization.
Melvin is only four years older than I am, and during childhood
we were constant playmates. Melvin planned to become a doctor, and
I dreamed of being a dentist so that we could open an office together
in the community. Somewhere along the way these desires were lost,
probably in school, where my scholarly ambitions died early. Although
Melvin did not go to medical school, he was always a good student.
Now he teaches sociology at Merritt College in Oakland.
I always admired Melvin's intellectual activities; it was he who
helped me to overcome my reading difficulties. When he began col-
lege, I used to follow him around and listen to him discuss books and
courses with his friends. I think this later influenced me to go to
college, even though I had not learned anything in high school. Melvin
also taught me poetry by playing recordings of poems or reading to
me. He was studying literature in school, and I suppose teaching me
poems was a way of learning them himself, We often discussed their
meanings. Sometimes Melvin explained the poems to me, but after a
while I found that I could understand them alone, and I began to
explain them to him.
I seem to remember poetry without effort, and by the time I en-
tered high school, my memory held a lot of poetry I had heard read
aloud. As Melvin studied for his literature class at Oakland City Col-
lege, I learned Edgar Allan Poe's "The Bells" and "The Raven," "The
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T. S. Eliot, Shelley's "Ozymandias"
and "Adonais." I also liked Shakespeare, particularly Macbeth's de-
spairing speech that begins "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomor-
row/ Creeps in this petty pace from day to day. . . ." Shakespeare was
speaking of the human condition. He was also speaking to me, for mv
life sometimes crept aimlessly from day to day. I was often like the
player fretting and strutting my brief hour upon the stage. Soon, like
a brief candle, my life would go out. I was learning a lesson, however,
that contradicted Macbeth's despair. While life will always be filled
with sound and fury, it can be more than a tale signifying nothing.
"Adonais," too, had a special impact on me. The poem tells the
story of a man whose friend dies or is killed. One of the best things in
33
■ Ihr „■>,■„■ Dial will, .ho passing of years the poet's feelings
,(., ' „,1 Ik- Wins t things differently. He tells how he feels,
- ,„, ,M,hHl,. loward his friend changes as time goes on. This was
,„ , M ,„ „■„„<■ I bogan to have near the end of high school as my friends
( l,,(,,d inn. tin, service, or got married, or tried to become part of the
v,, v system that had humiliated us all the way through school. As time
l,:m«d I began to see the futility of the lives toward which they were
headed. Marriage, family, and debt; in a sense, another kind of slavery.
"Ozymandias" impressed me because I felt there were different
levels of meaning in it. It is a rich and complex poem:
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which vet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"Mv name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
The poem could mean that a man's life is like the myth of Sisyphus.
Each time vou push the rock up the mountain, it rolls back down on
vou Men build mighty works, and yet they are all destroyed. This
king foolishlv thought that his works would last forever, but not even
works of stone survive. The king's great monument was destroyed,
victim of the inevitable changes that come with time. On the other
hand it could be that the king was so wise that he wanted people to
take their minds off their achievements and look with despair because
they, too, would reach that edge of time, where everything around will
be leveled.
Often it is impossible to understand at any specific period in your
life just what is happening to you, since changes take place in imper-
ceptible ways. This was true of my own adolescence. My admiration
for Melvin led to a love of poetry and later to my interest in literature
34
Changing
and philosophy. When my brother and I analyzed and interpreted
poetry, we were dealing in concepts. Even though I could not read, I
was becoming familiar with conceptual abstractions and the analysis of
ideas and beginning to develop the questioning attitude that later
allowed me to analyze my experiences. That led in turn to the desire to
read, and the books I read eventually changed my life profoundly.
35
5
It's about a kid like you were who believed. He was born
believing but as he grew, everything around him, begin-
ning with his parents and sisters and teachers, everybody
seemed to say that what he believed wasn't so. Sure, they
said they believed and they prayed and cried to God and
Jesus Christ Almighty but that was a few moments out of a
couple of hours in church each week. So somehow he be-
came two personalities, one as sincere as the other, and
then three, because he could stand off and watch the other
two. The reason was that he suspected maybe the people
who didn't believe might be right, that there was nothing
to believe in. But if he accepted this and put down the
beautiful honest good things he'd lose out on all he could
have gained if he'd never lost his belief in believing.
Charles mincus. Beneath the Underdog
Choosing
During my adolescence, often without realizing it, I was mak-
ing important choices. Some influences in our early years are so clear
that their effect cannot be denied. We also may unconsciously re-
ject other influences as we go along. It is hard to say at any point
how things will turn out. All the time I was going to junior high school
and getting into trouble, fighting on the block, listening to poetry,
and talking with Melvin, other strong forces were at work. Often they
were contradictory in nature and pulled me in different directions. This
caused confusion and conflict later, until I learned to sort them out and
understand what they meant.
One of the most long-lasting influences on my life was religion.
Both my parents are deeply religious, and when Melvin and I were
36
Choosing
small, my father often read to us from the Bible. My favorite was the
Samson story, followed closely by David and Goliath. I must have
heard those stories a thousand times. Samson's strength was impressive,
as well as his wisdom and his ability to solve the riddles put to him.
Strength and wisdom — I still link the hero with my father in those
terms. I liked David and Goliath because, despite Goliath's strength
and power, David was able to use strategy and eventually gain the
victory. Even then, the story of David seemed directed to me and to
my people.
When we were growing up, we went to church every day, or so it
seemed. Back then, the Antioch Baptist Church was only a little store-
front, where the faithful gathered. I belonged to the Baptist Young
People's Union, the Young Deacons, the junior choir, and I attended
Sunday school and worship services weekly. My father was the associ-
ate pastor for a long time. He liked to preach the sermon about the
prodigal son, and as he preached he really moved around in the pulpit,
waving his arms and beating the stand. He terrified me with tales of
fire and brimstone and how sinners and the unrepentant would end up
in a lake of fire. He was a real "burner."
The whole family was involved in church one way or another,
holding offices, singing in the choir, serving on the usher board or
other committees. I was very active as a junior deacon, and every third
Sunday the regular deacons gave us their chairs below the pulpit. We
sat in their places and administered certain parts of the services —
taking up the collection and leading the congregation in prayer, every-
thing except delivering the sermon. I did it all. I even read the sick List
and special messages, although I had difficulty with reading. None
of the other junior deacons did any better, however; we were all pretty
illiterate.
If we were weak in reading, however, other activities compensated.
I loved to act in plays because I had acquired a certain eloquence re-
citing the poetry that Melvin taught me. It was easy for me to remem-
ber a part after I heard it once or twice. My activities in church
led to music. My parents were so impressed with everything I was
doing that they decided to have me study the piano, mainly as a good
way for me to take a more active role in the religious services. I studied
piano for seven years with some excellent music theorists and classical
pianists.
Looking back, I see that my friends and I were all in the same boat
37
In mIht,' lit) liril "ii rurl 1 1 and trying to reach heaven in church.
Ii. 1.'... i. iklii^ purl in church activities and leading the serv-
i. . • . i « i ■ us ,i li'clini; of importance unequaled anywhere else in
"Ul llV'I'i,.
i ■ 1 ■ r j yi'ur.s our pastor, Reverend Thomas, had a sign on the pulpit:
I'nAviii changes thincs. The congregation was encouraged to see
pravcr us the only way to salvation. If we had problems — sickness,
accidents, financial difficulties — prayer was the answer. Everybody in
the church prayed with you, sharing in a common purpose that relieved
tension and had a cathartic effect. No other institution in the commu-
nity provided such an outlet. At that time the church was the only-
stable force in the Black community, and while some people do not
think it was very effective, it did offer a kind of permanence and stability
to our lives. The church was always there, providing solace and hope.
For me the church was a source of inspiration that offered a
countermeasure against the fear and humiliation I experienced in
school. Even though I did not want to spend my life there, I enjoyed
a good sermon and shouting session. I even experienced sensations of
holiness, of security, and of deliverance. They were strange feelings,
hard to describe, but involving a tremendous emotional release.
Though I never shouted, the emotion of others was contagious. One
person stimulated another, and together we shared an ecstasy and be-
lieved our problems would be solved, although we never knew how.
James Baldwin has described this religious experience very well in
The Fire Next Time. He writes about the excitement and ecstasy that
can fill a church during the service. "There is no music," he says,
"like that music, no drama like that drama of the saints rejoicing, the
sinners moaning, the tambourines racing, and all those voices coming
together crying holy unto the Lord. . . . Their pain and their joy were
mine, and mine were theirs — they surrendered their pain and joy to
me, I surrendered mine to them." Once you experience this feeling, it
never leaves you.
For a while I thought of becoming a minister, but I gave it up
when I studied philosophy in college. I began asking questions about
the concept of religion and the existence of God. In trying to find God
and understand Him as a philosophical existential Being, I began to
question not only the Christian definition of God, but also the very
foundation of my religion. I saw that it was based on belief alone, the
soundness of which was never questioned.
38
Choosing
Because I eventually found it necessary to question and examine
every idea and every belief that touched my life, I reached a kind of
impasse with religion. Yet its impact on me continues in different ways.
To this day, for example, I rarely use profanity. People who have
come to know me often ask why. I can only say that profanity was
never used in our home. If I had been caught using it, my father would
have punished me. My mother and father always lived as Christians,
and this extended to the way they spoke.
When I think back on the meetings in that storefront, it seems to
me that religion made an impression in a more important, yet less
direct, way. It has nothing to do with a personal system of belief, but
rather an awareness of what religious action can or ought to be.
Something remarkable was taking place during every prayer service,
When people in the congregation prayed for each other, a feeling of
community took over; they were involved in each other's problems
and trying to help solve them. Even though it was entirely directed to
God and did not go beyond the meeting, it suggested how powerful
and moving it can be to have a shared sense of purpose. People really-
related to each other. Here was a microcosm of what ought to have
been going on outside in the community. I had the first glimmer of
what it means to have a unified goal that involves the whole community
and calls forth the strengths of the people to make things better. I am
sure that is part of why I was drawn to religion and why it offered so
much to me then.
At the same time I was growing aware of a wholly different style of
life that had nothing to do with religion. One of the reasons so many-
people found comfort and solace in church was that it provided — even
though briefly — an escape from the burdens and troubles of everyday
life. There was another way of life, however, that did not seem to 2nd
this relief necessary. From what I could see, this other life also had
none of the worries and problems that beset ordinary working-class
people.
In our community some people had achieved a special kind of
status. They drove big cars, wore beautiful clothes, and owned many
of the most desirable things life has to offer. Almost without trying,
they seemed to have gotten the things for which the rest of the people
were working so hard. Moreover, they were having fun in the process.
They were not forced to compromise by imitating white boys and go-
ing on in school. They succeeded in spite of the humiliations of the
39
!l, , rhlluiuili'l ' 1 ' J ' • Ulf
■ 1 1 , 1 1 in \ . .i iiMiin nl I act, they often won success at the ex-
|n ii. i ..I id,- ■ .'iv who caused our troubles. They opposed all
inlliunh iinl in, ulc uv peace with the Establishment. In doing so,
I hi 1 I"' 1 .in ic bin men in the lower-class community.
I !ii'. wa.s thi' world of Walter, jr., my second-oldest brother, who
was ,iJw;j\'s called "Sonny Man" in our family. When I was small, he
illicit look care of me, and I looked up to him. By the time I was a
tccri-age.r, Sonny Man was a hustler, with a reputation as a ladies'
man, (To this day he has never married.) To be a hustler means to be
a survivor. The brothers on the block respected him and called him a
hipster, even in those days. When people asked me what I wanted to
be when I grew up, I said I wanted to be like him. To me, Sonny Man
was much freer than the rest of us. Compared with my father's struggle,
the way Sonny Man lived offered much to my hungry eyes.
My father's constant preoccupation with bills is the most profound
and persistent memory of mv childhood. We were always in debt, al-
ways trying to catch up. From an early age "the bills" meant I could
not have any of the extra things I wanted. I hated the word so much
it made me cringe inside, just the way I felt listening to Little Black
Sambo and the Tar Baby stories. For me, no words on the street were
as profane as "the bills." It killed me a little each time they were men-
tioned, because I could see the never-ending struggle and agony my
father went through trying to cope with them. It is a situation familiar
to most people in the Black community. In one of his letters to his
father, George Jackson spoke for me: "How do you think I felt when
I saw you come home each day a little more depressed than the day
before? How do you think I felt when I looked in your face and saw
the clouds forming, when I saw vou look around and see your best
efforts go for nothing — nothing." I know exactly what he meant.
My father always paid his bills on time. He might complain about
them, particularly about the interest, but he paid. As I grew older, I
would sometimes examine the bills he received, and I saw that in most
cases the greater portion of the money was going to pay interest. If
we bought something like a refrigerator, we wound up paying double
the original cost. Sometimes the bills exceeded his whole paycheck.
My father never mailed his payments. Melvin and I took them to
the stores because he wanted the receipts stamped. He felt that if he
mailed the payments, they might make a mistake, not send the receipt,
and charge him more. This had happened in the past. Every two
40
Choosing
weeks, or once a month, depending on when the payment was due, he
would make out a list for us and arrange the money in separate en-
velopes, one for each store, with the receipts inside. Then, when we
returned, he would carefully check the receipts. For years Melvin and
I made the rounds of Oakland stores, paying bills for our father. I was
still doing this when I was arrested in 1967.
When I became aware of the effect of the bills on my family, I
wanted to be free of them. It was more than the bills that disturbed
me, however. We were in an impoverished state, and I found it hard to
understand how my father could work so hard yet have so little. He
was a jack-of-all-trades — carpenter, brick mason, plumber — no job was
beyond him, He worked at two and sometimes three jobs at once, and
yet we never got ahead. After finishing one of his various jobs, he
would hurry home and work around the house or in the garden, and
then go off to another job. We could not understand how he did it —
never a day to rest or relax — and never a complaint. I think the years
of hard work are partially responsible for his poor health now. He
was always a strong person and never sick until his later years.
When I was older and had a chance to see how people in better
circumstances lived, I saw that our difficulty resulted from the large
number of people in our family. For years all nine of us lived in three
or four rooms, with little opportunity for privacy. Until I was eleven
or twelve, I had to sleep with Melvin in the kitchen, and sometimes
before that, in bed with my sisters. It never occurred to me that I could
have a room of my own. Fortunately, there was a great deal of affec-
tion and humor among us all, but still it was hard. I see now that in
those years the idea took root in my mind that we were suffering such
hardship through our own fault, I equated the idea of the family with
being trapped and plagued by bills. At an early age I made up my
mind never to have bills when I grew up. I could not know then that
this determination would extend eventually to the point of not being
married or having a family of my own.
My fear of being hounded by debt led me down Sonny Man's road
for a while. When I saw how much he was respected on the block, I
began to spend most of my time there, at first in the little gangs we
had in school, and at parties, but later in the pool hall and bars. For
a long time I was attracted to this way of life, until I discovered it was
not what it seemed. That came later.
Even though I was attempting to be like Sonny Man, I nonetheless
41
li, , M/fJ/fNiMN, S«l, I,/.
,„|„ m ,.,j McImji ni. I 1 11%. educational achievements. Both avenues
, | ]| f .) ., wiiy, Iml I could not know which road was best. I
I. ,.l .-. ii Hlu.-ks tako (J«! education road and get nowhere. Many of
1 1 1 ■mined lo the block, scorning their years in school, and cursing
i lie white man for holding them back. Other Blacks had apparently
in.ii le il on the block but ended up broken men, in prison or dead.
Theic. was no clear pattern to follow; it was hard to know what to do.
This dilemma faces almost all young Black men struggling to
achieve a sense of identity in a society that denies them their basic
rights. The Black teen-ager, in his most impressionable and vulnerable
years, looks around and sees a contradiction between society's ex-
pressed values and reality— the way things actually are. The "Sonny
Men" of the community who defy authority and "break the law" seem
to enjoy the good life and have everything in the way of material pos-
sessions. On the other hand, people who work hard and struggle and
suffer much are the victims of greed and indifference, losers. This
insane reversal of values presses heavily on the Black community. The
causes originate from outside and are imposed by a system that ruth-
lessly seeks its own rewards, no matter what the cost in wrecked hu-
man lives.
This can be profoundly disorienting to a teen-ager trying to under-
stand and define himself. Like adolescents everywhere, he wants an
image to model himself after, and he becomes confused because there
is such disparity between what he is taught and what he sees. Most
adolescents in Black communities expect no justice from school au-
thorities or the police. The painful reality of their lives from childhood
on reveals that the inequities they encounter are not confined to a few
institutions. The effects of injustice and discrimination can be seen in
the lives of nearly everyone around them. A brutal system permeates
every aspect of life; it is in the air they breathe.
In attempting to cope, the teen-ager seeks some kind of protection
for himself in order to survive, some way of dealing with the con-
tradictions that surround him. This usually takes the form of resistance
to all authority. For many adolescents it is the only weapon they have.
Most of the time, their rebellion is directed against authority outside
the home; but if there is no strong family support, it can disrupt their
relationships at home. Even the closest families crumble because out-
side pressures are so relentless.
42
( 'liiHi.sin;
To a certain extent this was true for me when I was in junior high
school. My rebellion was minor and never became a serious problem,
though it caused friction for a while. Looking back, I see that it was a
reflection of the confusion and sense of fragmentation I was going
through, part of the process of finding out who I was. It was also the
beginning of my independence.
Everyone in our home shared the household chores. Mine were the
usual ones; taking out the garbage and, after my sisters left home,
washing the dishes and cleaning the stove. I also had to trim the
hedges around the house. My father supervised the outside, while my
mother's domain was inside the house. I hated chores and always tried
to escape them, pedaling away on my bike and leaving everything to
Melvin. I often stayed away from home until late at night, even though
I knew my parents would punish me when I returned. Sometimes I
made up fancy stories to tell them, but nothing could save me from
punishment. I preferred my mother's whippings — she was more gentle
— but most of the time my father did it. Another responsibility I failed
to carry out was a paper route I had for a time. I spent all the money I
collected and could not pay the bill. When the people who had paid
money did not receive their papers, I had to give it up.
This kind of resistance was due in large part to the need to assert
myself as a separate person, apart from my parents. I was beginning
to want to make my own decisions. Often this independence took
the form of avoiding responsibilities; at other times it was more con-
stru ctive.
Ever since I can remember, I have hated to see anyone do without
the things he needs. This attitude probably came from ray father's
influence and the ideas he expressed in church. Once, when I was
about fifteen, I met a kid who had no food at home. This was one of
those nights when I was staying out late, and I brought him home and
woke up my parents rummaging through the kitchen cabinets. When
I told them the boy and his family needed food and that we could
share ours, they did not object, although they were angry about my
staying out late. Another time, when Melvin was going to San Jose
State College, he needed a car but had no money. I had a small savings
account, about $300, and I gave him all of it. My parents teased me
about giving away all my money, but at bottom, they were proud of
this example of family closeness.
43
iU i ntu)li'u,ll!l Slid I'll'
i n|„ , iiui, ■. iliungh, I showed my sense of closeness in ways they
.lid ,.|i|iiu\v "I, Whenever my sister Myrtle got stranded at a party
,, ...nil where els. 1 , she always called and asked me to pick her up. I
■Mm), I wail uiilil my parents were asleep and then swipe the car keys.
I L 1 m 1 ihis every time she asked me, and every time I got into trouble
lor hiking the car because I was not old enough to drive.
My parents never spared the rod when I was young. As I grew
older, they punished me in other ways, but I knew they did it because
they cared about me and wanted me to develop a sense of responsi-
bility. I think, too, they admired my independence, even though it
sometimes worried them. They must have known I was at a difficult
stage of development. Most Black parents are very aware of the con-
flicting and bewildering influences that surround their children, and
they experience a deep anxiety over whether they will get into trouble
with the law or at school. They understand only too well how the sys-
tem works. The loving discipline exerted in our home was not lost on
me, and when the time came, it stood me in good stead.
44
6
We love our country, dearly love her, but she does not
love us — she despises us.
MARTIN DELANY, 1852
High School
Throughout high school I constantly did battle with the in-
structors. The clashes I had steadily intensified and finally led to my
transfer out of the Oakland system for a while. In the tenth grade
I was attending Oakland Technical High School on Broadway and
Forty-first. One day the teacher sent me to the principal's office for a
minor offense I had committed the day before. The principal and
teacher agreed that I could come back if I said nothing in class for
the rest of the semester. I had already decided that I wanted out of
school entirely, but I tried to sit mutely in class and not violate any of
the rules, such as chewing gum, or eating sunflower seeds. One day I
forgot the agreement and raised my hand to ask a question. The teacher
blew up. "Put your hand down," he said. "I don't want to hear any
more from you this whole terml" I stood up and told him it was im-
possible to learn anything if I was forbidden to ask questions. Then I
walked out of the class.
Leaving school then meant I was short of classes and would be
unable to go on to the eleventh grade and graduate. So I went to live
in Berkeley with my oldest sister, Myrtle, and transferred to Berkeley
High School.
Although Oakland was known in the East Bay Area as a rough com-
munity, it was not until I transferred to Berkeley High School that real
trouble started with the police. One Sunday, while walking over to a
45
/I, i ululli'iuinj '■in, <<!<•
m! lintist', I mi'i lnui 111 livt! girls I knew. They asked me to go with
il.i'in in i |uriv Although I did not take up their offer, we walked
dniiH I'M'.rilici, mint we were going the same way. Pretty soon a car
pnilril up carrying a guv named Mervin Carter (he's dead now) and
'.nun' ijiIkts. They jumped out and began hassling me about messing
around with their girl friends. I recognized Merv Carter; in fact, I
had hung around Berkeley High with him and a couple of his friends.
Like everybody else, they were turf-conscious and hated to see an out-
sider making time with their girls. I reminded him that we knew each
other, that I was not interfering with the girls, and was on my way
somewhere else, "Anyway," I said, "we hang around together in
school." He told me we were friends inside school but not outside. I
could not understand why he said that, whether he meant it or was just
trying to impress his buddies.
By that time they had dropped a half circle on me. I realized they
were going to jump me, so I hit Merv in the mouth, and then they all
came at me. They beat me up pretty badly, but I refused to fall down.
The girls were yelling at me to run, but I would not. No matter how
many guys Merv had with him, I meant to stand my ground. As long
as I could, I was going to look them in the eye and keep going forward.
Somebody called the police, but by the time they arrived Carter
and the others had gone, and I was there alone, bleeding, and missing
several teeth. Although the police tried to find out who did it, I would
not tell them anvthing. I did not want to be an informer because this
was a problem between the brothers; the outside racist authorities had
nothing to do with it. I have always believed that to inform on some-
one to the teacher, to the principal, or to the police is wrong. These
people represent another world, another racial group. To be white is
to have power and authority, and for a Black to say anything to them
is a betrayal. So I did not inform, and they escaped the police; but they
could not escape me.
The next day I went to school carrying a carpenter's hammer and
an old pistol I had swiped from my father. The pistol did not work — it
lacked a firing pin— but I had no intention of shooting anybody any-
way. At lunchtime I "cold-trailed" Men.' and about six of his buddies
downtown. Catching up with them finally, I started to swing on him
with the hammer. I hit him several times, wanting to hurt him, but
he rolled with most of the blows and was not hurt too badly. Mean-
46
High School
while, I forgot I had the gun. When the others began picking up rocks
and sticks, I remembered the gun and used it to keep them at bay.
This was the only way I could defend myself, because I had no friends
at Berkeley High School to help me. I could not let them get away
with what they had done, particularly since they had falsely accused
me of messing with their girl friends. Somebody called the police
again, and when I heard the sirens, I ran farther downtown, where I
was arrested. I was only about fourteen then, so they took me to Juve-
nile Hall, where I stayed for a month while they investigated my
family background. Then I was released to the custody of my parents.
This was my first time into anything that could be called "criminal,"
even though I had raided fruit trees, cracked parking meters, and
helped myself to stuff in the neighborhood stores. I never looked upon
that as stealing or doing anything illegal, however. To me, that was not
taking things that did not belong to us but getting something really
ours, something owed us. That "stealing" was merely retribution.
When I was released from Juvenile Hall, Berkeley High School re-
fused to admit me again because my parents lived in Oakland. I
went back to Oakland Tech. My friends there and others who knew
me praised what I had done in Berkeley. What I had done was an
accepted action under the circumstances. If I had not retaliated, I
would have been less respected.
Things went along well at Oakland Tech for a change. I was able to
handle my differences with the teachers a little better because of my
satisfaction with life outside the classroom. My reputation as a fighter
kept the wolves away. I was also known as a hipster like my brother
Sonny Man, and I liked that, too. Some of the kids even called me
"crazy," but that never bothered me because they used to call my
father that. To me "crazy" was a positive identity.
When I got my first car, it did a lot to help my "crazy" reputation.
My father gave me one that had a lot of spots on it from primer paint.
Melvin named it the "Gray Roach." We would pile into it and go
riding, looking for girls or some action. My friends did not like the
way I drove, which led to any number of arguments and fights. Since
there were so few cars available to joyride in, they had little choice.
Sometimes I backed up as fast as I could, down a whole block, and
when we reached the corner, I would jam on the brakes. The guys
would fall out of the car, yelling. Sometimes fights started right there.
47
St i iilio.nl in- . " Ih'ii (lie guard rail was down to signal an ap-
|ii.m. h I 1 ' I'l ri|j(l)l »n driving around the guard rail and over
1 1 I ,. I 1 1.1 > 1 several near misses, and as soon as we crossed the
1 1 ,ii I ■. rv, tvouc would pile out of the car again, arguing and fighting.
U l,n. liic light), were over, our friendships were stronger than ever.
I iu'V i t 'spec! i -d me, even though they thought I was crazy. I thought I
cinilil ouimaneuver anybody, anything, and never passed up a chance
in cry, Since I always won, I soon believed that I could always defeat
the invincible and the powerful, the way David defeated Goliath.
Eventually, in my pride, I believed that I could outmaneuver death.
I have never feared death. The escape from finitude was an idea
that came to me after I saw the movie Black Orpheus. I loved that
film, and saw it many times, although I thought the outcome would
have been different had it been my life. Whereas Orpheus flirted with
death and died, I had been in lots of conflicts, near death on many
occasions, but had always come out alive. Since I had not been killed, I
guess I concluded that I could not be killed. Orpheus, too, attempts to
outmaneuver death, even though the history of mankind proves that
death always wins. In spite of this, the only way that Orpheus can
maintain his dignity is to be unafraid and attempt to outmaneuver his
oppressor. This seems characteristic of human existence, for although
all of us are sentenced to death each day, we try desperately to get
away from it. If we cannot, we try to put it off by acting in a manner
that discredits death and eliminates our fear of it. This is our victory.
Black Orpheus demonstrates an even more profound truth: it is
possible to circumvent death through the heritage that one generation
passes on to another. At the end of the film the little girl is dancing
while the little boy plays Orpheus's guitar. Though Orpheus and his
woman are dead, her dance is a victory over death. The new genera-
tion survives, and the sun still rises. The world does not stop because
death has crushed a beautiful and significant part of it. Orpheus had
passed on his guitar to the little boy. This means of sustaining life
raises the sun again.
I held on to the idea that I was immune to death for a long time. I
still do not fear the end, but I no longer believe that I cannot be
killed. Life has taught me that it is an ever-present possibility; too
many of my comrades have died in the past few years to let me feel
that my last day will never come. Even so, I tell the comrades you can
only die once, so do not die a thousand times worrying about it.
48
High School
Around this time some people got the notion that I had mystical
powers. I began to put various friends and acquaintances into hypnotic
trances, mostly at parties or in some of the rap sessions with brothers
on the block. I learned the technique first from Melvin, who had been
taught by Solomon Hill, a fellow student at Oakland City College.
Later, I studied hypnosis techniques on my own and became pretty-
good at it. It is easy to learn, but dangerous. Just learning the technique
does not teach you all you should know when you are dealing with a
person's mind. You can easily hurt someone.
I guess I have put over two hundred people into trances at various
times. I gave them posthypnotic suggestions — to eat grass, bark like a
dog, or crawl over the floor like a baby — and sometimes I stuck pins
and needles into their flesh. Once I used autohypnosis and put myself
into a trance. When Melvin put a red-hot cigarette on my arm, I did
not move or feel any pain, although he burned me prettv badly. This
incident impressed a lot of people, but Melvin was pretty upset about
it. Far from using hypnosis in a destructive way, I used it for "sty-ling"
in the community. As my reputation grew, the novelty wore off, and
finally I stopped, because it was no longer interesting,
When I was not putting people into trances or racing around in the
Gray Roach and drinking wine with the brothers, I was standing in a
crowd of people at parties reciting poetry. My problem was that I
could not dance, and when the music began, I felt self-conscious, If I
did not leave when the dancing started, I would begin discussions or
recite poetry. By the time I reached high school I was really very good
at remembering the poetry I had heard read aloud. Much of it was
poetry that Melvin had taught me. David's favorite was the Ruhaiyat
of Omar Khayyam. Whenever I recited at parties or got people into
deep conversations, everyone would stop dancing and gather around.
Some of them would ask me to recite things I had memorized. The
host or hostess usually became angry when people stopped dancing,
and often I would be asked to sit down and shut up, or split. This
usually signaled the beginning of a fight.
Somehow I managed to stay in Oakland Tech until I graduated,
despite my continued defiance of the authorities. They tried to down
me for many years, but I knew inside that I was a good person, and
the only way I could hold on to any self-esteem was to resist and defv
them.
Everything they opposed I supported. That was how I first became
49
H, vnlillitttitlttj ill,-
, njuMiUm "I 1'ulrl t :,iiir<t and the Cuban Revolution. Earlier, when
I I,, .in I i- ,„-|,rr. .'I'ilit'i/.ing Paul Robeson, I defended him and believed
in him, ,■■■■11 though I knew very little about his life. When they
.t.uli'il [titling down Castro and the revolution of the Cuban people,
I knew ii must be good, too. I became an advocate of the Cuban
Involution.
My high school diploma was a farce. When my friends and I grad-
uated, we were ill-equipped to function in society, except at the bot-
tom, even though the system said we were educated. Maybe they
knew what they were doing, preparing us for the trash heap of society,
where we would have to work long hours for low wages. They
never realized how much they had actually educated me by teaching
the necessity of resistance and the dignity of defiance. I was on my way
to becoming a revolutionary.
50
Part Two
I began to question what I had always taken for granted
7
I knew right there in prison that reading had changed
forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the abil-
ity to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving
to be mentally alive. . . . My homemade education
gave me, with every additional book I read, a little bit
more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blind-
ness that was affecting the black race in America.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Reading
By the time I had reached my last year of high school, I was a
functional illiterate. Melvin was in college and doing very well, I felt
that I could do it, too, but when I talked to a counselor about it, he
made the mistake of telling me I was not college material. I set out to
prove them wrong. First, I had to learn to read. The school authorities
told me not only that I was not college material because of my per-
formance in school, but also that I was not intelligent enough to do col-
lege work. According to the Stanford-Binet test, I had an I.Q. of 74.
They felt justified in discouraging me. I knew I could do anything I
wanted to do; that was how I maintained my self-respect. I wanted to go
to college, so my defiance of their opinion, as well as my admiration for
Melvin, were incentives for me to learn to read.
I knew I would have to read well in order to make it in college. I
also knew that it would be difficult to find someone to teach me be-
cause I was embarrassed. I decided to teach myself. My key was
the poetry I had learned to recite. I knew' plenty of words but could not
yet recognize them in print. Using Melvin's poetry books, I began to
53
/i, r ulnltnuiirij SViii Ulf
hill-, ill, | H ii m. I Kin'w, associating the sounds in my head with the
I -ii 'In- i'.nr>
I dm I picked up Mclvin's copy of Plato's Republic, bought a dic-
i i i . 1 1 , l i v , .mil started learning to read things I did not already know.
I Ii,, lU'./iuhlir .seemed a logical choice; I wanted to join Melvin and his
1 1 send;, in their intellectual conversations. It was a long and painful
process, hut I was determined. Lee Edward had taught me to look
(hem in the eye and keep advancing. They said I was not college
material, so I was advancing on them.
I spent long hours every day at home going through the Republic
and pronouncing the words I knew. If I did not know a word, I would
look it up in the dictionary, learn how to sound it out if I could, and
then learn the meaning. Proper names and Greek words were difficult,
and I soon began to ignore them. Day after day, for eight or nine hours
at a time, I worked on that book, going over it page by page, word by
word. I had no help from anyone because I did not want it. Embarrass-
ment overwhelmed me. My mother loved reading and devoured books.
Here I was, an adult who could not read, as my father, my mother, and
Melvin could. I felt so low I stayed in my room where nobody could
see what I was doing, poring over the words, using the dictionary on
every single line, and memorizing the sounds and the meanings.
Once or twice I asked Melvin to pronounce a word for me or ex-
plain it. He was shocked that I could not recognize some of them and
at first, I think, disgusted. That hurt. His disgust could not com-
pare with my own. He said that not knowing how to read was a very
bad thing, but I knew that by then, and his disapproval made it even
more difficult to learn. My sense of shame had kept me from seeking
help earlier; now it became impossible for me to ask. I had to do it
by myself.
It seems to me that nothing is more painful than a sense of shame
that overwhelms you and afflicts the soul. This pain may not even be
your fault, but it can still be very acute. It hurts more when you know
that there is no natural process, as in the body, whereby the pain will
go away. You have to relieve it with your own strength of will, your
own discipline, and determination. I had been hurt many times in
fights, but nothing equaled the pain I felt at not being able to read.
The pain from fighting went away in time. The shame I felt would not
go away.
54
Reading
I do not know how long it took me to go through Plato the first
time, probably several months. When I finally finished, I started over
again. I was not trying to deal with the ideas or concepts, just learning
to recognize the words, I went through the book about eight or nine
times before I felt I had mastered the material. Later on, I studied the
Republic in college. By then I was prepared for it.
When I began to read, a whole new world opened to me. I became
interested in books. I still could not read very well, but each new book
made it easier. I did not mind spending many hours, because reading
was enjoyment, rather than work. When I reached this point, I ac-
cumulated books and read one after another. I did this all through
my senior year in high school and the summer following. By the time
I really knew my way through a book, I had graduated from high
school.
55
8
All my life I had been looking for something, and every-
where I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I
accepted their answers too, though they were often in
contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was nai've. I
was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself
questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me
a long time and much painful boomeranging of my ex-
pectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears
to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself.
ralph ellison, The Invisible Man
Moving On
About two years before I completed high school, my inner life
was plunged into a sea of confusion and turmoil that lasted until Bobby
Seale and I organized the Black Panther Party. For four years I went
through the kind of pain that comes when you are letting go of old
beliefs and certainties and have nothing to take their place. This dis-
tress had begun earlier and was a result of contrasting and varying
elements in my life. As I matured physically, the problems seemed
more insoluble, the strain became greater; I felt adrift. I began to
question everything about my life. There seemed no haven of security
in anything I was doing or hoping to do.
I questioned my religious activities and my search for God. I ques-
tioned whether school was worth the effort. Most of all. I questioned
what was happening in my own family and in the community around
me. Mv father's struggle with bills was common in many of the families
of my comrades. He had worked hard all his life only to sink more
56
Mowing On
deeply in debt. It seemed that no matter how hard he worked and
sacrificed for his family, it led to more work. Things never became
easier. I began to ask why this had happened to us and to everybody
around us. Why could my father never get out of debt? If hard work
brought success, why did we not see more success in the community?
The people were certainly working hard. It seemed we were predes-
tined to endless toil. We poor people never reached the point of having
time to pursue the things we wanted. We had neither leisure time nor
material goods. Not only did I want to know why this was so; I wanted
to avoid a similar fate.
While I was looking for answers to the questions of family and
religion, I was also thinking of joining a monastery, not so much out of
religious conviction as for the isolation and time to examine these
questions in peace. I felt the need to have a place where I could
examine things without interference. Isolation would shield me from the
troubles that were suffocating my father and my family. But I did not
entertain the idea very seriously and soon gave it up. I began to think
that Melvin's approach through books was one way to examine these
questions. His life required a certain amount of detachment from the
community, and that was attractive to me.
On the other hand, there was my brother Sonny Man. For a long
time I had believed that he had the freedom I was seeking. He had
possessions galore, no bills, and was defying the authorities and getting
away with it. Even so, I came to the conclusion that he had not so
much defied the authorities as compromised with them. All the hipsters
with cars, clothes, and money had rejected the family relationship that
I valued so highly. They had achieved a level of freedom at great per-
sonal cost. To me this was not freedom but another form of subjuga-
tion to the oppressor. Even if Sonny Man had escaped their control,
his life did not answer my questions. It did not help me understand
why most Blacks never gained the freedom he seemed to have. I
finally decided that Sonny Man and his comrades did not have the
power to determine their destiny. They operated through someone
else's power — the oppressor's — and they were not free as long as they
had to reject some part of themselves.
The religious beliefs acquired in childhood also troubled me. After
struggling through some of Socrates' works, as well as those of Aristotle,
Hume, and Descartes, I began to question what I had always taken for
57
liri o\\il\uiu)tlj fill I, ir/i
ri iii!< il. I hi- kli'.ifi in the philosophical works that Melvin was studying
■|mI]'''I nvr) into mv confused mind. All the while, I felt damned. To
i|iii*s(l<m ivligion was a profane, heretical act that went against every
mora] tenet I had known at home. I identified very strongly with
Stephen Dedalus in James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man because he went through a similar experience. He felt great guilt
when he first questioned Catholicism, believing that he would be con-
sumed by the fires of hell for his doubt. In a way, that is what hap-
pened to me.
The struggle with religious faith is a difficult experience to describe
because it involves many things that are either repressed earlier in life
or not understood. In the process, the fears that are not related to
religious beliefs are released. By then you no longer have any pro-
tection from your religion, and you have to start dealing with your
dread. The real world closes in on you, cutting off traditional comforts
like a simple prayer. Eventually, you, and you alone, have to deal with
troubling questions. This always leads to anxiety. There is nothing, so
you are free — -and terrified.
In a way, the turmoil and conflict I was experiencing were a kind
of madness, with no way out. The patterns that appealed to me as
answers to my questions were closed to me. Sonny Man represented
an attractive way of life, but it did not provide the answers I was seek-
ing. Melvin was into another appealing pattern, but I had never been
able to handle school effectively. I was confused. Sonny Man had an
illusion of freedom; Melvin had an approach, but I could not read.
Nobody had any answers for me. Sometimes I went one way, some-
times another.
I never expressed these feelings to my parents. I had such respect
and admiration for my father, who had done so much for us, that I
could not openly question his life. He would not have understood what
I was going through. I was grateful, I was appreciative, and I loved
and admired him, but I had questions not easily answered.
When my high school years came to an end, these doubts and
troubles were at a high pitch; they were still with me when I started
Oakland City College in the fall of 1959 and were reflected in the new
way of life I was beginning. My life style alarmed my parents. They
must have sensed my inner turmoil because they began to object
strenuously to certain things I was doing. It was the beatnik era in
58
Moving On
the Bay Area, and I grew a beard. To my parents, a beard meant a
bohemian, and my father insisted that I shave it off. I refused. Because
he was accustomed to wielding total authority in our family, my refusal
was a serious family violation. My father pressed me again to shave;
I continued to resist. The climax came abruptly one night when he con-
fronted me with an ultimatum to shave right then and there, I told
him I would not do it. He struck me, and I ran to him, grabbing him
with a bear hug to restrain his arms, and then pushing him away. He
chased me out of the house, but I could run much faster, I also knew
that I was strong enough to overpower him, but I would never have
done that. I just fled. My love for my father had clashed with a need
for independence, symbolized by the beard. Knowing I could not return
without shaving, I decided to move out. While my father was at
work the next day, I packed my things and moved in with a friend,
Richard Thorne. For years, a room was kept for me in my father's
house, and periodically I returned home for short periods of time. Our
differences mellowed and eventually disappeared. My room in my
parents' house was not considered given up until 1968, when I was
sentenced to prison.
59
9
Black is not only beautiful; it's bad, too. It's fast, classy,
name-taking and ass-kicking, too.
melvin van Peebles, Ain't Supposed
to Die a Natural Death
College and the Afro-
American Association
In 1959, when I started at Oakland City College (now Merritt
College), it was a junior college located in North Oakland, surrounded
by the Black community. Many local Black people attended it at that
time, and I joined the crowd. College for me was more than books and
lectures and classes, although they were important. For one thing, I
never really left my neighborhood, and I still ran with the brothers on
the block. Anv money I had came from petty crime, an old pattern
with me. This, however, became a time for making new friends and
joining organizations that started me in new directions.
One of my first friends at Oakland City College was Richard
Thorne. Richard was a very tall, very black fellow who even then, prior
to the "Black cultural revolution," wore his hair in a natural. His ap-
pearance caused awe in some people and frightened others. He knew
how to excite these feelings and how to exert an influence over those
around him.
I stayed with Richard for about a month after I left home, before I
moved into Poor Boys Hall. Poor Boys Hall was behind a bookstore
across from the college. The owners had converted a big storage ware-
house into a dormitory with rooms — not really rooms but stalls — with
60
College and the Afro-American Association
thin plywood dividers. A stall rented for $15 a month. I loved being
around Poor Boys Hall because most of my friends among the "roomers"
were young fellows just beginning to "get their thing together." Like
me, they were searching. Some of them have gone on to become a part
of the system, while others have been further victimized. I kept up
close contact with Richard Thorne, too, and we spent a lot of time to-
gether at his apartment. Richard usually had several girls around and
was always talking about the two or three books he intended to write.
I was more interested in the girls.
Richard had a theory about intimate human relations. He saw non-
possessive love as pure love, the only love, and possessive love as a
mockery of pure love. Nonpossessive love did not enslave or constrain
the love object. Richard was critical of what he called "bourgeois love
relationships," of the marriage system and the requirements of the mar-
riage partners to each other (i.e., sex with one partner, jealousy, limits
upon mobility, well-defined roles based upon sex). He felt that people
should not be like cars or houses. No man should own a wife, nor
should a wife own a husband, because ownership is predicated upon
control, fences, barriers, constraints, and psychological tyranny. Non-
possessive love is based upon shared experiences and friendship; it is
the kind of love we have for our bodies, for our thumb or foot. We love
ourselves, our bodies, but we do not want to enslave any part of our-
selves.
Richard and I engaged in some deep discussions. Sometimes we
stayed at his house for days talking about the general situation, cursing
the white man for everything, and drinking wine. When I tired of these
sessions, I made it down to the block to be with the righteous street
brothers.
I was an angry young man at this time, drinking wine and fighting
on the block, burglarizing homes in the Berkeley Hills, and going to
school at Oakland City College. I was moving away from family and
church, which had offered me so much comfort in earlier days, and was
looking for something new. The questions I asked during this period
were so disturbing that I acted outrageously to drive them away. I was
looking for something more tangible with which to identify. I saw all
my turmoil in terms of racism and exploitation and the obvious dis-
crepancies between the haves and have-nots. I was trying to figure out
how to avoid being crushed and losing respect for myself, how to keep
61
IU i uluiunmru Sufi Itlf
fmiti . niln.i. mi', tin' i j] i] 11 r'.ssi >v that had already maimed my family
.!,<! . mtir.iimity,
In . 1 1 1 1 ■. vii ins al l'hi Beta Sigma, a social fraternity I joined
l"i i wliilc, I expressed my anger about society and white racism. The
(.(hers told me that I sounded like a guy named Donald Warden who
was preaching Blackness at the Berkeley campus of the University of
< California. He was the head of an organization called the Afro-Ameri-
ean Association.
I went to Berkeley to find Warden and hear what he was saying.
The Erst member I met, though, was Maurice Dawson, one of Warden's
tight parbiers. He turned me off with his arrogance. I had come search-
ing for something, and he scorned me because I did not already know
what I was seeking. I could not understand what he was saying about
"Afro-Americans." The term was new to me. Dawson really put me
down.
"You know what an Afro-Cuban is?"
"Yes."
"You know what an Afro-Brazilian is?"
"Yes."
"Then why don't you know what an Afro-American is?"
It may have been apparent to him, but not to me. But I was still
interested.
Maurice taught me a lesson that I try to apply to the Black Panther
Party today. I dissuade Party members from putting down people who
do not understand. Even people who are unenlightened and seemingly
bourgeois should be answered in a polite way. Things should be ex-
plained to them as fully as possible. I was turned off by a person who
did not want to talk to me because I was not important enough.
Maurice just wanted to preach to the converted, who already agreed
with him. I try to be cordial, because that way you win people over.
You cannot win them over by drawing the line of demarcation, saying
you are on this side and I am on the other; that shows a lack of con-
sciousness. After the Black Panther Party was formed, I nearly fell into
this error. I could not understand why people were blind to what I
saw so clearly. Then I realized that their understanding had to be de-
veloped.
I started going to meetings of the Afro-American Association, whose
purpose was mainly to develop a sense of pride among Black people for
62
College and the Afro-American Association
their heritage, their history, and their contributions to culture and SO-
ciety. Donald Warden, a lawyer from the University of California at
Berkeley, had started it. Most of the meetings were book-discussion
groups, which I enjoyed, because by then I was relating to books more
and more. I began reading books about Black people, and every Friday
we sat up half the night discussing them. We read The Souls of Black
Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Up from
Slavery by Booker T. Washington, and The Fire Next Time by James
Baldwin.
I was one of the first ten to join the organization. On Saturday
afternoons we would go into the Black community in Oakland or San
Francisco and speak on the street corners, running down the racist sys-
tem. People came to listen because they were bored and wanted some
entertainment, not because Warden's words were relevant to their lives.
I started to bring more of the poor, uneducated brothers off the
block into the Association. Most of the people in the Association were
college students and very bourgeois, but my people were off the block;
some of them could not even read, but they were angry and looking for
a way to channel their feelings. Warden was glad to have the lumpen
brothers along. He needed some strong-arm men who would just fol-
low instructions without question. Some brothers and I formed a body-
guard for him. Sometimes our street meetings on Saturdays ended in
fights, because white boys came around looking for trouble. That was
when I began to see through Warden.
My family thought that Warden was up to no good, and they were
quite unhappy when I joined him. They said that he was interested
only in building up his law practice. But I had to find out for myself.
My disillusionment began when I realized he would not stand his
ground in a fight. Once, in a San Francisco meeting, some white guys
yelled at us from a window and then came down to fight. I was throw-
ing hands, trying to protect Warden, and when I looked up, he had run
off leaving us there by ourselves.
My real decision to quit the group came after I observed War-
den in a debating situation, where his training and skill should
have put him in a superior position. The Oakland Tribune ran an article
reporting how the City Council had made derogatory remarks about
the Association. Warden wrote and asked to be placed on the agenda
of their next meeting, About twenty of us went down to City Hall ex-
63
I n . inn; W.uclrn to Uike them to task. We were eighth on the agenda,
.mil when nni turn came, Mayor John Houlihan (who later went to
jml iiu embezzlement) said that we could not speak then because some
mipmiant people were there from Piedmont, an all-white, upper-class
.iir.i within the city limits of Oakland. Houlihan told us to wait until
last, even though it was our turn on the agenda, I thought Warden
would object, but no, he just bowed his head, and I thought I saw him
shuffle a little.
After the Piedmont merchants made their presentation, Houlihan
declared the agenda closed because there was time to consider only ten
items. He told us to write the City Council and say our piece. One of
the councilmen insisted we be heard, however, since we had written to
them in accordance with the rules and had been properly placed on the
agenda. Don still had not taken a position. When he rose to speak, he
started by saying we were there because the Tribune had reported
some derogatory remarks made about us at the council's last meeting.
He denied that the Afro-American Association wanted trouble. The
Association, he said, wanted an end to the lethargy of Black people, to
get them off welfare, make them clean themselves up, and sweep their
streets in a big self-help effort. He said he wanted Black people to stop
lying around collecting unemployment checks.
That was when I decided that my parents were right about him.
Afterward, the whole City Council, including Mayor Houlihan, patted
Warden on the back. He ate it up.
In our own meetings — with no white people around — he really took
them apart. But he had little interest in Black people. He was inter-
ested in getting Barry Goldwater's daughter to contribute money to his
sister's little sewing shop, which he claimed was a clothing factory.
Goldwater's daughter became an honorary member of the Afro-Ameri-
can Association.
I was really sick when I saw what went down before the City Coun-
cil. Warden talked about Black folks as if we were a lazy bunch of
people who hated ourselves and had no will to better our own situa-
tion. He said nothing about causes, although in that City Council room
he was speaking to some of the major causes of Black people's suffer-
ing in the city of Oakland.
Disillusioned, I left the organization, but not before I had gotten
a lot out of it. For one thing, I had begun to learn about the Black past.
64
College and the Afro-American Axsncintitm
but I could not accept Warden's refusal to deal with the Black present.
He was obviously interested in building his law practice and routinely
began street meetings by saying that he did not have to be there, that
he was Phi Beta Kappa and a lawyer. A lot of people who went to him
for legal services found him out. They thought he would charge less
money, being one of them, but he charged high fees. I went to him
once, and he charged more than double the usual fee. Another attor-
ney asked $250, but Warden wanted $750 before he even stepped into
the courtroom.
He offered the community solutions that solved nothing. I could
have accepted this if he had been ignorant, but I believe he knew what
he was doing. At least he knew what the popular position was. That is
why I tell the Black Panther Party that we must never take a stand just
because it is popular. We must analyze the situation objectively and
take the logically correct position, even though it may be unpopular.
If we are right in the dialectics of the situation, our position will pre-
vail.
Warden was just the opposite. He rode the tide, even if it went
against the community. He talked of a mass exodus to .Africa, and
never believed in it. He maintained that capitalism in general, and
Black capitalism in particular, was the best economic system. The only-
thing wrong with it, he said, was the racism in the system. He never
spoke of the link between capitalist exploitation and racism. Wanting
whites to believe that Blacks were behind him, Warden talked up
Black power and Black history, using the people to gain their support.
Downtown, he looked for whites to support him out of their fear of
organized Blacks. Warden gathered the people around him to lead
them like sheep. That is what he did at the City Council.
He is the only Black man I know with two weekly radio programs
and one on television. The mass media, the oppressors, give him public
exposure for only one reason; he will lead the people away from the
truth of their situation.
Others also drifted away from the Afro-American Association.
Richard Thorne was in it for a while, but he left to found the Sexual
Freedom League. Later, he organized a spiritual cult called Om Eternal
and changed his name to Om. He is now that cult's unquestioned high
priest (God). Another member of the Afro-American Association at that
time was a skinny, bright, and articulate fellow called Ron Everett. He
65
/ i i ir iluttt'tUH 7 Suit t'lt
I I i ihf A%vn.H;ilion Id Watts in Los Angeles, where he estab-
(| |, in . i\vu cultural nationalist group, US, which eventually became
. i nil ilr rallcil himself Karenga— "the original." Later, the Black
I'.niilicrs hail some bitter confrontations with US, and they killed
iwn nl our finest comrades."
" I hr Hh<'k Panther Party believes that Karenga's organization and the Los Angeles
BOUetf conspired against our Los Angeles Party- organizers, John Huggins and Al-
|iri:ulicc "Bunchy" Carter, and assassinated them. The police wanted to stop the
Black Panthers' organizing efforts, and Karenga's organization wanted to curtail a
competitive group and buy the friendship of the police.
66
10
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
langston huchzs, "The Negro
Speaks of Rivers"
Learning
Life was opening up for me. I was trying to relate to Donald
Warden and his program, trying to stay close with my righteous-
partners on the block, and also attending Oakland City College on a
"come-and-go" basis. iMy motivation had been to prove to my high
school teachers that they were wrong about me. To my surprise I
found myself enjoying the learning process and tremendously stimu-
lated by ideas I encountered. Since I had studied classical piano for
almost seven years, I took music appreciation, music history, music
theory, and also art appreciation and art history.
Most semesters I started out with a regular load, but if something
came up in class that excited my imagination, I sometimes skipped
classes, gathered as many books and materials as I could find on the
subject, and stayed in the library or at home in my apartment reading.
While studying psychology, for example, I became fascinated with
the principle of stimulus response and the biological behaviorism of
John B. Watson. I read a number of books on the subject, works by
B. F. Skinner and Pavlov, and read about their studies and theories of
personality and human development. By the time I was satiated with
stimulus response, or whatever, the class had moved on to another unit
that was of no interest to me.
Philosophy was another favorite subject. I still remember some of
the issues raised in logic class thirteen years ago. Such points as the
67
/I, 1 I '/llfl.'M'/M/ Still hit'
.lill. H ii' i ii lexical and stipulative definitions I use in discus-
simis luil, iw Kvcii now ] find it difficult to enter into a dialogue on
jiliiln'.iijiiiv in Black Panther ideology until there is agreement on basic
ileliuilinns, This presents problems when I speak on college campuses.
I 1 1 v in lead an audience into rational and logical discussions, but many
Students arc looking for rhetoric and phrasemongering. They either do
not want to learn or they do not believe that I can think.
I was also impressed with A. J. Ayer's logical positivism, particularly
his distinction between three kinds of statements — the analytical state-
ment, the synthetic statement, and statements of assumption. These
ideas have helped me to develop my own thinking and ideology. Aver
once stated, "Nothing can be real if it cannot be conceptualized, articu-
lated, and shared." That notion stuck with me and became very im-
portant when I began to use the ideological method of dialectical ma-
terialism as a world view. The ideology of the Black Panthers stands
on that premise and proceeds on that basis, to conceptualize, articulate,
and share. Some key aspects of Black Panther ideology and rhetoric,
like "All Power to the People" and the concept "pig," developed out of
that. They were not haphazardly introduced into our thinking or
vocabulary.
While studying philosophy, I realized that I had been moving for
some time toward existentialism. I read Camus, Sartre, and Kierke-
gaard and saw that their teachings were similar to lessons I had learned
from the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible. Actually the "Preacher" was
the first existentialist:
All things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous, and to the
wicked; to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean; to him that sacri-
ficed!, and to him that sacrificeth not: as is the good, so is the sinner; and he
that sweareth, as he that feareth an oath.
This is an evil among all things that are done under the sun, that there is
one event unto all: yea, also the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and
madness is in their heart while they live, and after that they go to the dead.
For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog is
better than a dead lion. . . .
I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor
the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men
of understanding, nor vet favour to men of skill; but time and chance hap-
pened! to them all.
68
From then on, I began to engage friends in existentialist discussions.
If a brother was hungry, I would say that it is all the same whether you
are hungry or full, whether you are cold or warm. It is all the same.
They really thought I was crazy. Then I began living like an exis-
tentialist, hitchhiking to Los Angeles and back, walking into the class
dirty, without shoes, and sometimes soaked to the skin from the rain.
It was all the same to me. One way or another I kept my reputation
going. All the time I was on the streets I read Ecclesiastes at least once
a month, until I was sentenced to the penitentiary, where they refused
me all reading material.
I was still questioning. Although college work did not give me
answers as such, I was beginning to comprehend human beings and the
universe, to feel I could develop answers that suited my own experience
and my knowledge of the world. Then, too, I was convincing mvself
that they had been wrong about me in public schools. When that
teacher told me to write "business" on the board, she wanted to show
the class that I was stupid; when they discouraged me from going
to college, it was because they thought I was stupid. As a matter of
fact, some of my college teachers thought I was stupid, too, because I
never did well on those silly little tests they gave us. One psychologv
teacher told me that I scored at the level of a "dull normal" on an I.Q.
test. Since I really liked this teacher, that hurt me badly. Then he gave
another test, which he said "indicated" that I was intelligent. Onlv
7 knew what was happening inside of me; only I knew what was hap-
pening between me and those books up in my apartment. I was learn-
ing, and learning well, I could think, I could read, and I could retain
the most difficult ideas. For over twelve years, they had tried to knock
me down, but I kept getting up, and now I was advancing on them.
Wliat I learned from Sonny Man also helped me to acquire an edu-
cation. I was free to pursue my education in my own style, because I
could support myself with activities on the block. Most important I did
not have to work. I ran gambling sessions at my apartment, serving as
the "houseman." This meant that I set up the games — cards or craps—
for everybody else to participate in, and then took a cut of the
winnings.
It was my studying and reading in college that led me to become a
socialist. The transformation from a nationalist to a socialist was a slow
one, although I was around a lot of Marxists. I even attended a few
69
Hrri'lutlomin/ Xuiririe
I,,, j.-. ,,| i j ■<• Progressive Labor Party, but nothing was happening
ilii'ir, juM :i lul (if tixlk and dogmatism, unrelated to the world I knew.
I '.ujijKiitrd CiStro all the way. I even accepted an invitation to visit
( lulu and recruited others for the trip, but I never made it. When I
presented my solutions to the problems of Black people, or when I ex-
pressed my philosophy, people said, "Well, isn't that socialism?" Some
of them were using the socialist label to put me down, but I figured that
if this was socialism, then socialism must be a correct view. So I read
more of the works of the socialists and began to see a strong similarity
between mv beliefs and theirs. My conversion was complete when I
read the four volumes of Mao Tse-tung to learn more about the Chinese
Revolution. It was my life plus independent reading that made me a
socialist — nothing else.
I became convinced of the benefits of collectivism and a collectivist
ideology. I also saw the link between racism and the economics of
capitalism, although, despite the link, I recognized that it was necessary
to separate the concepts in analyzing the general situation. In psycho-
logical terms, racism could continue to exist even after the economic
problems that had created racism had been resolved. Never convinced
that destroying capitalism would automatically destroy racism, I felt,
however, that we could not destroy racism without wiping out its
economic foundation. It was necessary to think much more creatively
and independently about these complex interconnections.
Even though I liked mv lectures and the discussions, I did not iden-
tify with the life style on campus. As soon as I finished my classes, I
would cto down to the block — sometimes to Sacramento Street in
Berkeley or over into West or East Oakland — and drink wine, gamble,
and fight. More than once I came from the block to class dead drunk.
I never minded being drunk in class because the ideas were more in-
toxicating; but I had instructors who hated having anyone go to the
bathroom while they were lecturing. It disturbed them. But when you
are full of wine, you just cannot hold your urine.
College was enjoyable, largely because I was not forced to go; this
made it different from high school. I could go to school or stay in my
apartment and read. Some davs I went to a movie or stayed on the
block. I started each semester setting my own pace, which often
included a trip to Mexico, or to jail, or dropping out, and all along I
learned a great deal.
In spite of the learning, I was still searching for answers to other
70
Learning
questions. The Afro-American Association had been a deep disappoint-
ment. I had often felt that it was nothing more than a training ground
for the Muslims; Warden seemed to have adopted a lot of their styles
and rhetoric. I began to investigate them more closely. I had read C.
Eric Lincoln's book Black Muslims in America, but what attracted me
most was Minister Malcolm X.
I first heard Malcolm X speak at McClymonds High School in Oak-
land, when he attended a conference sponsored by the Afro-American
Association on "The Mind of the Ghetto." Muhammad Ali (then Cas-
sius Clay) was with Malcolm, and he told about his conversion to Islam.
He was not yet the heavyweight champion. Malcolm X impressed me
with his logic and with his disciplined and dedicated mind. Here was a
man who combined the world of the streets and the world of the
scholar, a man so widely read he could give better lectures and cite
more evidence than many college professors. He was also practical.
Dressed in the loose-fitting style of a strong prison man, he knew what
the street brothers were like, and he knew what had to be done to reach
them. Malcolm had a program: armed defense when attacked, and
reaching the people with ideas and programs that speak to their condi-
tion. At the same time, he identified the causes of their condition in-
stead of blaming the people.
I started going to the Muslim mosques in both Oakland and San
Francisco, although not regularly. However, I. knew a number of Mus-
lims and talked to them fairly often. I did read their paper regularlv to
follow the speeches and ideas of Malcolm. I would have joined them,
but I could not deal with their religion. By this time, I had had enough
of religion and could not bring myself to adopt another one. I needed
a more concrete understanding of social conditions. References to God
or Allah did not satisfy my stubborn questioning.
Back at the college, Kenny Freeman along with Isaac Moore, Doug
Allen, Ernie Allen, Alex Papillon, and some others had begun to or-
ganize the West Coast branch of RAM, the Revolutionary Action Move-
ment. They claimed to function as an underground movement, but in-
stead of revolutionary action, they indulged in a lot of revolutionary
talk, none of it underground. They were all college students, with bour-
geois skills, who wrote a lot. Eventually, they became so infiltrated with
agents that when an arrest was made, the police spent all their time
showing each other their badges.
Bobby Seale tried to get me into the RAM chapter, but the members
71
lb i olulhm.mj Suh UU-
,.!„... I t,> (urcpl mr. They said I lived in the Oakland hills and
inn |„„,i, ; ,.ois, which was an absolute lie. All my life I have
lived ni ihr Hollands. Actually, I think I threatened them, because I
r.niM us.- my head but could also "get down" like the street brothers.
Tin-)' claimed to be dedicated to the armed overthrow of the govern-
in. •n't. when, in reality, most of them were headed for professional oc-
cupations within the system. Freeman and the other RAM members
eventually excluded Bobby because he lacked bourgeois skills.
RAM formed a front group on campus, the Soul Students Advisory-
Council, and Kenny Freeman stacked it with his boys. I became very
active in it, joining the main thrust to get a course in Negro history into
the curriculum. We held street meetings outside the college and met
with the administrators, who offered foolish reasons about why Negro
history should not be offered; most of them came down to the belief that
Black people had no history to teach. We eventually brought about a
few changes, not many, and for a short while RAM seemed very en-
gaging to me. I considered it the answer to many things I was searching
for and felt fulfilled when I talked with others about the African past
and what we had contributed to the world (all the groups I went
through had that in common). Everyone— from Warden and the Afro-
American Association to Malcolm X and the Muslims to all the other
groups active in the Bay Area at that time— believed strongly that the
failure to include Black history in the college curriculum was a scandal.
We all set out to do something about it.
The Soul Students Advisory Council lacked any real depth, and
when we succeeded in getting the Black history class on campus, we
had nothing else to do. There were the usual parties and other social
activities, but these had no real meaning for me and provided no saris-
faction.
72
11
As for the future, the young streetcorner man has a fairly
good picture of it. . . . It is a future in which everything
is uncertain except the ultimate destruction of his hopes
and the eventual realization of his fears. The most he can
reasonably look forward to is that these things do not come
too soon.
elliot LIEBOH-, Tally's Corner
The Brothers on the Block
Nothing we had done on the campus related to the conditions
of the brothers on the block. Nothing helped them to gain a better un-
derstanding of those conditions. As I saw so many of my friends on their
way to becoming dropouts from the human family, I wanted to see
something good happen to them. They were getting married and begin-
ning to have babies. Ahead of them were the round of jobs and bills
my father had gone through. It was almost like being on an urban
plantation, a kind of modern-day sharecropping, You worked hard,
brought in your crop, and you were always in debt to the landholder.
The Oakland brothers worked hard and brought in a salary, but they
were still in perpetual debt to the stores that provided them with the
necessities of life. The Soul Students Advisory Council, RAM, the
Muslims, and the Afro-American Association were not offering these
brothers and sisters anything concrete, much less a program to help
them move against the system. It was agonizing to watch the brothers
move down those dead-end streets.
The street brothers were important to me, and I could not turn away
from the life I shared with them. There was in them an intransigent
73
Hi i ututintiDrij Suit ittr
lui' Kill' Inwiuil .ill llniM- sources of authority that had such a dehuman-
i.iir.i rlUvi ,ui | lie n.wummity . In school the "system" was the teacher,
lint mi Mm liln.'k tlir system was everything that was not a positive part
ni ill,- iDinnuniity. My comrades on the block continued to resist that
authority, and I felt that I could not let college pull me away, no matter
how attractive education was. These brothers had the sense of harmony
and communion I needed to maintain that part of myself not totally
crushed by the schools and other authorities.
At Oakland City College many of the Blacks were working as hard
as they could to become a part of the system; I could not relate to their
goals. These brothers still believed in making it in the world. They
talked about it loud and long, expressing the desire for families, houses,
cars, and so forth. Even at that time I did not want those things. I
wanted freedom, and possessions meant nonfreedom to me.
It was a complex scene. Sonny Man was involved only with the
brothers who did not go to college. His friends who had gone to college
were estranged from him. Some of his closest "running partners" in
high school moved away from him after they went to college and he
stayed on the block. Now that I was also in college, I did not want to
move away from the street brothers, as Walter's friends had done.
That is why when I was not studying or in class, I was down on the
block with the righteous brothers.
I think one of the reasons why I, in particular, had so many fights
was because I weighed only about 130 pounds. You got a lot of pres-
tige from being able to fight the hefty guys, who first gained their
reputation by downing lightweights like me. There were not many
others as small as I was, who looked the big ones in the eye. I had an
added disadvantage: all the way through school my baby face made
people think I was younger than I was. I resented being treated like
a baby, and to show them I was as "bad" as they were, I would fight
at the drop of a hat. As soon as I saw a dude rearing up, I struck him
before he struck me, but only when there was going to be a fight any-
way. I struck first, because a fight usually did not last very long, and
nine times out of ten the winner was the one who got in the first lick.
Sonnv Man was very good with his hands, and he taught me how to
hit hard in spite of my light weight. Most of the other guys really did
not know how to hit, so I always fired first and knocked them out, or
at least knocked out a tooth or closed up an eye. Finally, I got a repu-
74
The Brothers on the Itlork
ration as a bad dude, and I did not have to fight as much. Evnv
once in a while, however, one of the "tush hogs"— our name for a bad,
tough street fighter on the block — would challenge me. After the fight
we usually became really good friends, because he would realize that
my features were deceiving.
Sometimes I got into teaching on the block, reciting poetrv or start-
ing dialogues about philosophical ideas. I talked to the brothers about
things that Hume, Peirce, Locke, or William James had said, and in
that way I retained ideas and sometimes resolved problems in mv own
mind.
These thinkers had used the scientific method by applying their
ideas to particular formulas. They excluded those things that did not
fit into the formulas. I explained this to the brothers, and we talked
about such questions as the existence of God, self-determination, and
free will. I would ask them, "Do you have free will?"
"Yes."
"Do you believe in God'"
"Yes."
"Is your God all-powerful?"
"Ye's."
"Is he omniscient?"
"Yes."
Therefore, I told them, their all-powerful God knew everything be-
fore it happened. If so, I would ask, "How can you say that vou have
free will when He knows what you are going to do before you do it?
You are predestined to do what you do. If not, then your God has lied
or He has made a mistake, and you have already said that your God
cannot lie or make a mistake." These dilemmas led to arguments that
lasted all day, over a fifth of wine; they cleared my thinking, even
though I sometimes went to school drunk.
Some of the brothers thought I was a pedant, putting them down.
Fights started occasionally over an imaginary insult, especially with
newcomers to the group, who did not know me or my relationship to
the brothers. I liked talking about ideas, and street brothers were the
only ones I wanted to be with at the time, because I liked the things
we were doing — standing on the corner, meeting people, watching the
women, and relating to those who struggled for survival on the block.
Rap sessions like this took place all over, in cars parked in front of
75
Itrvohitimtnnj fiuiakk
ill. 1 1 • 1 1 1 ' < i J .in Sai-riimi-nto Street near Ashby in Berkeley, outside
I j I Lt i '-, where parlies were being held, and sometimes inside.
i Inltl tlu'in about the allegory of the cave from Plato's Republic,
anil llirv enjoyed it. We called it the story of the cave prisoners. In the
cut allegory Plato describes the plight of the prisoners in a cave who
rreeive their impression of the outside world from shadows projected
on the wall by the fire at the mouth of the cave. One of the prisoners is
freed and gets a view of the outside world — objective reality, He re-
turns to the cave to tell the others that the scenes they observe on the
wall are not reality but only a distorted reflection of it. The pris-
oners tell the liberated man he is crazy, and he cannot convince them.
He tries to take one of them outside, but the prisoner is terrified at the
thought of facing something new. When he is dragged outside the cave
anyway, he sees the sun and is blinded by it. The allegory seemed very
appropriate to our own situation in society. We. too, were in prison
and needed to be liberated in order to distinguish between truth and
the falsehoods imposed on us.
The dudes on the block still thought I was "out of sight" and some-
times just plain crazy. One of the reasons for the "crazy" label was
because I always did the unexpected, a valuable practice in keeping
your adversary off balance, If I knew that some guys wanted to jump
on me, I would go where they hung out — just show up by myself and
challenge them right on the spot. Many times they were too shocked to
do much about it.
This street philosophy also crept into my academic work. The
brothers were hostile toward the police because they were always bru-
talizing and intimidating us. So I began to study police science in
school to learn more about the thinking of police and how to outma-
neuver them. I learned how they conducted investigations, I also began
to study law. My mother had always urged me to do this, even in high
school, because I was good at arguing points, and she thought I would
be a good lawyer. I studied law, first at City College and later at San
Francisco Law School in San Francisco, not so much to become a
lawyer but to be able to deal with the police. I was doing the unex-
pected.
One day, in 1965, as I was walking across Grove Street to the col-
lege, I saw a white man sideswipe a brother's car. A motorcycle cop
came up, and the two drivers entered into an argument over who was
76
The Brothers on the Mock
wrong. The cop was about to write a ticket for the brother. I had
been standing there with the other people watching this incident, ami
I walked over to the white man and told him that he was wrong. Angrv
at this, the cop told me to be quiet because I was not involved. I
came back at him and told him that I was involved because I knew
how he treated people on the block. The fact that he had a gun, I said,
did not give him the right to intimidate me. The gun did not mean
anything, because the people were going to get guns of their own and
take away the guns of the police. I ran these things down to him in
front of all the people. That was the first time I stood a policeman
down.
77
12
What is property? Property is theft.
PIERBE-JOSEPH PROUDHON, 1840
The brigand ... is the true and only revolutionary.
HAKUNIN, 1870
Scoring
I first studied law to become a better burglar. Figuring I might
get busted at any time and wanting to be ready when it happened, I
bought some books on criminal law and burglary and felony and looked
up as much as possible. I tried to find out what kind of evidence they
needed, what things were actually considered violations of the law,
what the loopholes were, and what you could do to avoid being charged
at all. They had a law for everything. I studied the California penal
code and books like California Criminal Evidence and California
Criminal Law by Fricke and Alarcon, concentrating on those areas that
were somewhat vague. The California penal code says that any law
which is vague to the ordinary citizen — the average reasonable man
who lives in California and who is exposed to the state's rules, regula-
tions, and culture — does not qualify as a statute.
Later on, law enforcement courses helped me to know how to deal
with the police. Before I took Criminal Evidence in school, I had no
idea what my rights really were. I did not know, for instance, that
police can be arrested, My studying helped, because every time I got
arrested I was released with no charge. Until I went to prison for some-
thing I was innocent of, I had no convictions against me; yet I had
done a little of everything. The court would convict you if it could,
78
Scoring
but if you knew the law and were articulate, then the judges figured
you were not too bad because your very manner of speaking indicated
that you had been "indoctrinated" into their way of thinking.
I was doing a lot of things that were technically unlawful. Some-
times my friends and I received stolen blank checks from a company,
which we would then make out for $150 to $200, never more than an
amount consistent with a weekly paycheck. Sometimes we stole the
checks ourselves; other times we bought them from guys who had
stolen them. You had to do this fast, before the companies distributed
check numbers to banks and stores.
We burglarized homes in the Oakland and Berkeley hills in broad
daylight. Sometimes we borrowed a pickup truck and put a lawn
mower and garden tools in it. Then we drove up to a house that
appeared empty and rang the bell. If no one answered, we rolled the
lawn mower around to the back, as if we planned to cut the grass and
trim the hedges. Then, swiftly, we broke into the house and took what
we wanted.
Often I went car prowling by myself. I would walk the streets until
I saw a good prospect, then break into the car and take what was on
the seat or in the glove compartment. Many people left their cars un-
locked, which made it easier.
We scored best, however, with the credit game or short-change
games. We stole or bought stolen credit cards and then purchased as
much as possible with them before their numbers were distributed.
You could either sell the booty or use it yourself.
A very profitable credit game went like this: we would pav S20 or
$30 to someone who owned a small business to say that we had worked
for him five years or so. This established a work record good enough
for credit in one of the big stores. Then we would charge about $150
worth of merchandise and pay $20 down. Of course, we used an as-
sumed name and a phony address, but we let them check the address,
because we gave them a location and telephone number where one of
our friends lived. We made payments for a couple of months. Then we
would charge over the $150 limit. If you were making pavments thev
raised your credit. We would buy a big order, and then stop making
payments. If they called our "place of work," thev were told we had
just quit. If they called our alleged address, they learned we had
moved over a month ago." The store was left hanging. Thev did not
79
,mll\ |>>-.,.. Ih'i.iusc they were actually robbing the community blind,
j i in witjIc oil tin.' amount and continued their robbing. The
I ; v„„ ,-Mi survive through petty crime and hurt those who hurt
Vnu
Once into petty crime, I stopped fighting. I had transferred the
OOnfiifit, the aggression, and hostility from the brothers in the com-
munity to the Establishment.
The most successful game I ran was the short-change game. Short-
changing was an art I developed so well that I could make $50 to $60
a daw I ran it everywhere, in small and large stores, and even on bank
tellers. In the short-change game I would go into a store with five one-
dollar bills, ask the clerk for change, and walk out with a ten-dollar
bill. This was the $5-to-$10 short-change. You could also do a $10-to-
$20 short-change by walking into the store with ten one-dollar bills and
coming out with a twenty-dollar bill.
The S5-to-$10 short-change worked this way: you folded up four
of the bills into a small tight wad. Then you bought something like
candy or gum with the other bill so that the clerk had to open the cash
register to give you change. I always stood a little distance from the
register so that the clerk had to come to me to give me the change. You
have to get the cash register open and get the clerk to move away from
it so that his mind is taken off what he has in the register.
When he brought my change from the candy, I handed him the wad
of four one-dollar bills and said, "Here are five singles. Will you give
me a five-dollar bill for them?" He would then hand me the five-dollar
bill before he realized that there were only four singles in the wad.
He has the register open, and I am prepared for him to discover the
error. When he did, I would then hand him another single, but also the
five-dollar bill he had given me and say, "Well, here's six more; give
me a ten." He would do it, and I would take the $10 and be gone be-
fore he realized what had happened. Most of the time they never
understood, It happened so fast they would simply go on to another
customer. By the time things began to click in their minds, they could
never be sure that something had in fact gone wrong until the end of
the day when they tallied up the register. By that time I was just a
vague memory. Of course, if the clerk was quick and sensed that some-
thing was not right, then I pretended to be confused and would say I
had made a mistake and give him the right amount. It was a pretty
safe game, and it worked for me many times.
SO
Scoring
The brother who introduced me to short-changing eventually be-
came a Muslim, but before that he taught me to burglarize cars parked
by the emergency entrances of hospitals. People would come to the
hospital in a rush and leave their cars unlocked, with valuables in the
open. I never scored on Blacks under any condition, but scoring on
whites was a strike against injustice.
Whenever I had liberated enough cash to give me a stretch of free
time, I stayed home reading, books like Dostoevsky's Crime and
Punishment, The Devils, and The House of the Dead, The Trial by
Franz Kafka, and Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel. I read and
reread Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, the story of Jean Valjean, a
Frenchman who spent thirty years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread
to feed his hungry family. This really reached me, because I identified
with Valjean, and I often thought of my father being in a kind of social
prison because he wanted to feed his family. Albert Camus's The
Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus made me feel even more justified
in my pattern of liberating property from the oppressor as an antidote
to social suicide.
I felt that white people were criminals because they plundered the
world. It was more, however, than a simple antiwhite feeling, because
I never wanted to hurt poor whites, even though I had met some in
school who called me "nigger" and other names. I fought them, but I
never took their lunches or money because I knew that they had noth-
ing to start with. With those who had money it was a different story. I
still equated having monev with whiteness, and to take what was mine
and what the white criminals called theirs gave me a feeling of real
freedom.
I even bragged to my friends how good I felt about the whole
matter. When thev were at my apartment during times when there
wasn't any food to eat, I told them that even though I starved, my
time was my own and I could do anything I wanted with it. I didn't
have a car then, because most of my money was spent on the apart-
ment, food, and clothes. When friends asked me why I did not get a
car, I told them it was because I did not want bills and that a car was
not my main goal or desire. My purpose was to have as much leisure
time as possible, I could have pulled bigger jobs and gotten more, but
I did not want any status symbols. I wanted most of all to be free from
the life of a servant forced to take those low-paying jobs and looked at
with scorn by white bosses.
81
/(, i„ilulloniir\/ Xuirith-
Kvi-minlly, 1 go! caught, and more than once, but by then I had
,| (AV J.,,.,.,1 „ fairly good working knowledge of the law, and I decided
,,, ,1,-jmd mvseli. Although no skilled legal technician, I could make a
, 1 ,.],.f,.„ S r, if you are an existentialist, defending yourself is another
muiiiitrstrtti.nl of freedom. When you are brought into the courts of the
lv.lul.lisl.inont. vou can show your contempt for them. Most defendants
want to get high-priced counsel or use the state to speak for them
through the Public Defender. If you speak for yourself, you can
say exactly what you want, or at least not say what you do not want to.
Or vou can laugh at them. As Elaine Brown, a member of the Black
Panther Party, says in her song, "The End of Silence," "You laugh ^ at
laws passed by a'silly lot that tell you to give thanks for what you've
already got." The laws exist to defend those who possess property.
Thev protect the possessors who should share but who do not. By de-
fending myself, I showed my contempt for that structure.
It gave me real pleasure to defend myself. I never thought in terms
of conviction or acquittal, although it was an added treat to escape their
net. But even a conviction would not have dismayed me, because at
least I had the opportunity to laugh at them and show my contempt.
They would see that I was not intimidated enough to raise the money
to get counsel— money that I did not have in the first place— or to ac-
cept a Public Defender.
I especially liked traffic violations. For a while, I paid a lot of traffic
tickets. When I became my own defender, I never paid another one.
Of the three major cases in which I defended myself, the only one I
lost was the one in which I was innocent.
Once, I was indicted on sixteen counts of burglary through trickery
as a result of the short-change game, and I beat the cases during the
pretrial period because the police could not establish the corpus delicti
or the elements of the case. Each law had a body of elements, and
each element has to be violated in order for a crime to have been
committed. That's what they call the corpus delicti. People think that
term means the physical body, but it really means the body of ele-
ments. For example, according to California law, in order to commit
armed robbery you have to be armed, and you must expropriate
through fear or force related to weapons; you can have armed robbery
without any bullets in the gun. The elements of the case relate to fear
and force in connection with weapons.
82
Grandmother Estella O'Neal (ca. 1950)
Lee Edward Newton and Walter Newton, Louisiana (ca. 1941)
Walter Newton, Jr. ("Sonny Man"), 1951
Scoring
In the short-change or "bunko" case I was accused of running my
game in sixteen stores. However, they could get only a few people to
say they were short in their registers. I was really saved from being
convicted because the police tried to get a young woman teller from a
bank to say that I had short-changed her. A lot of people will not admit
they have been short-changed. In the pretrial, in which they were try-
ing to get a federal case, they asked me whether I had gone into the
bank. I refused to admit it. I knew that the young woman whom they
wanted to testify against me had not shown up at court, When I bailed
out, I went to her bank and asked her if the police had been there.
She said they had and that they were trying to persuade her that I had
short-changed her. She said she would not testify because she knew it
had not happened. I invited her to court to testify on my behalf, She
came and explained to the judge that the police had tried to persuade
her to testify, but she would not comply.
My argument was that the police had invented the short-change
rap against me. I pointed out that clerks who were short-changed
would have missed the money either when I was in the store or at the
end of the day. None of these people had notified the police. The
police had sought them out and by suggesting that they had been short-
changed were really offering the clerks a chance to make five or ten
extra dollars — a sort of pay-off for testifying. Most people, I said, are
not as honest as the young girl bank teller.
Another argument I put forth in my defense was that if someone
else had gotten change after I had been in the store before inventory
of the register, it was quite possible, even probable, that the money-
had been lost at some other time. I got a dismissal on the grounds of
insufficient evidence.
In the second major case, I was accused of having stolen some
books from a store near the school and of having burglarized the car of
another student and taken his books. He reported to the bookstore
that his books had been stolen. They were on the lookout for books
with the marking he had described. I had not stolen the books, even
though they were in my possession. I was doing a lot of gambling at
the time, and some students who owed me money gave me the books
instead. We used books for money, because if a book was required in
a course, we could sell it to the bookstore. Even though I did not know
where the books came from, I suspected that they were stolen.
83
Hi'rululttiniirij Suit hie
I ligiued there w;is about SRO worth of books in the stack. When I
nei'ilrii money, I sent my cousin to the bookstore to cash them in. The
l>iinbti'iT look (horn away from her, claiming that they were stolen.
They would not give her any money, nor would they return the books.
I went down to the store and told them they could not confiscate my
books without due process of law. They knew I was a student at the
college and that they could call the police on me any time they wanted.
I told them that either they return the books right then or I would
take as many books as I thought would equal the amount they had
stolen from me. They gave me the books, and I went on to class.
Apparently the bookstore notified the Dean of Students, who called
the police. While I was in class, the Oakland police came and escorted
me with the books to the campus police, who took me to the Dean's
office. No one could arrest me, because there was no warrant. The
bookstore wanted to wait until the man who had reported the books
stolen returned from the Army to identify them. So they took me to the
Dean's office, and the Dean said he would give me a receipt, keeping
the books until the owner came back. I told him that he would not give
me a receipt, because they were my books and he could not confiscate
my property without due process of law; to do so would be a violation
of mv constitutional rights. I added, "Furthermore, if you try to
confiscate my property, I will ask the police over there to have you
arrested." The police stood looking stupid, not knowing what to do.
The Dean said the man would not be back for about a week, but he
wanted the books. I took the books off his desk and said, "I'm en-
rolled here, and when you want to talk to me, I'll be around." Then I
walked out of the office. They did not know how to deal with a poor
oppressed Black man who knew their law and had dignity.
When I was charged and brought to trial, I defended myself again.
The case revolved around identifying the books. The man knew that
his books had been stolen; the bookstore knew they had lost some
books. Identification had not been made, but I was charged with a
theft. I had stashed the books away so that nobody could locate them,
and when I came to court, I left them behind. They brought me to trial
without any factual evidence against me, and I beat the case with the
defense I conducted, particularly my cross-examination.
The woman who owned the bookstore took the stand. The previous
year, on Christmas Eve, she had invited me to her home, and I had
seen her off and on after that. When I was unwilling to continue a
84
Scoring
relationship with her, she became angry. I wanted to bring this out, but
when I began this line of questioning, the judge was outraged and
stopped it. By this time, however, she had broken down in tears on
the stand, and it was apparent to the jury by the questions I asked
and her reaction to them that she had personal reasons for testifying
against me.
When the Dean testified, I really went to work. Although no books
were entered into evidence, he said that I had in my possession some
books identical to those on the list the day the police brought me to
his office. I asked him, "Well, if the police were right there, why didn't
you put me under arrest?" He said, "I wasn't sure of my rights." This
was the opening I needed. I said, "You mean to say that I attend your
school, and you're teaching me my rights without even knowing your
own? You're giving me knowledge, and you don't know your basic civil
rights?" Then I turned to the jury and argued that this was strange in-
deed. The judge was furious and almost cited me for contempt of court.
I was in contempt, all right, and not only of the court. I was contemp-
tuous of the whole system of exploitation, which I was coming to un-
derstand better and better.
I knew what the jury was thinking, and when the Dean said that he
did not know his rights, I used his ignorance to my advantage. People
automatically think, "You mean you're a college professor and you don't
know something that basic and simple?" Once I planted this idea in
the minds of the jurors, it completely negated the Dean's testimony.
I told the jury that I collected books, which I did, traded and sold
them, and that I had some volumes similar to those named in the in-
dictment — same names, authors, and so forth, When they wanted to
view the books, I asked the judge if I could go home and get them.
The judge said that he could not stop a trial in the middle (it was
a misdemeanor case) to let me go home. My strategy worked, however,
and I ended up with a hung jury.
Then came the second trial. This time I had the books in court, but
nobody could identify them. I had acquired some different books —
same authors and same names — and put some similar markings in them.
The man who claimed his car had been burglarized, the Dean, and
the owner of the bookstore could not positively identify them. They
kept saying that the books were either similar or the same, but they
were not sure.
I emphasized this uncertainty, saying that all I knew was I had
85
If, t^lutioifin, SuSrUk
pui, Ii.ismI |J„- l«>"ks from another person. 1 told the jury that 1 had
,„,, h, |,„ i ■ ..,,],.,, the books and that by bringing them to court I was
tryfeg EO Slid nut ii they- belonged to those who had brought the-
rb.uivs. I got another hung jury.
Thev tried me a third time, with the same result. When they
brought the ease up a fourth time, the judge dismissed it. Off and on,
with continuances and mistrials, the case dragged over a period of nine
months. It was simple harassment, as far as I was concerned, because
I had not stolen the books. They might also have been trying to test
new prosecutors; I had a different one every time, every chump in
Alameda County, and still they got nowhere. I looked them straight in
the eye and advanced.
The third case came out of a party I attended with Melvin at the
home of a probation officer who had gone to San Jose State College
with him. Melvin had known some of the people at the party quite a
while, and most of them were related to each other in some way, either
by blood or by marriage, Melvin and I were outsiders. As usual, I
started a discussion. A party was good or bad for me depending on
whether I could start a rap session. I taught that way for the Afro-
American Association and recruited a lot of the lumpens.
Some of these sessions ended in fights. It was almost like the
dozens again, although, here, ideas, not mothers, were at issue. The guy
who could ask the most penetrating questions and give the smartest
answers "capped," or topped, all the others. Sometimes after a guy was
defeated, or "shot down," if he wanted to fight, I would accommodate
him. It was all the same. If I could get into a good rap and a good
fight, too, the night was complete.
At the party, while we were talking, someone called Odell Lee
came up and entered the conversation, I did not know him, had only
seen him dancing earlier in the evening, but I had gone to school with
his wife, Margo, who was there. Odell Lee walked up and said, "You
must be an Afro-American." I replied, "I don't know what you mean.
Are you asking me if I am of African descent, or are you asking me if
I'm a member of Donald Warden's Afro-American Association? If the
latter, then I am not. But if you're asking me if I'm of African ancestry,
then I am an Afro-American, just as you are." He said some words in
Chinese and I came back in Swahili. Then he asked me, "Well, how do
you know that I'm an Afro-American?" I replied, "Well, I have twenty-
86
Scoring
twenty vision, and I can see your hair is just as kinky as mine, and your
face just as black, so I conclude that you must be exactly what I am,
an Afro-American."
Saying that, I turned my back and began to cut my steak. I was the
only one in the room with a steak knife. All the others had plastic
utensils, but since the steak was kind of tough, I had gone into the
kitchen for a regular steak knife. Having made my point, my move, so
to speak, I turned my back on Lee in a kind of put-down. To him it
was a provocative act.
Odell had a scar on his face from about the ear to just below his
chin. This was a very significant point, because on the block you run
into plenty of guys with scars like that, which usually means that the
person has seen a lot of action with knives. This is not always the case,
but when you are trying to survive on the block, you learn to be hip
to the cues.
So I turned my back and began cutting steak with the knife I had
in my right hand. He grabbed my left arm with his right and turned
me around abruptly. When he did, my knife was pointed right at him
in ready position. Lee said, "Don't turn your back on me when I'm
talking to you." I pushed his hand off my arm. "Don't you ever put
your hands on me again," I said, and turned around once more to my
steak.
Ordinarily I would not have turned my back a second time, because
he had all the signs of a tush hog. But somehow the conditions did not
add up. Most people there were professionals— or training to become
professionals— and this man with the scar did not seem to fit. We were
not on the block, so I thought perhaps the scar meant nothing. All of a
sudden, however, he was acting like a bully, and now he wanted every-
one to know he was not finished with me. When I turned my back on
him a second time, this would have ended the whole argument for the
Black bourgeoisie, but the tush hog responded in his way,
He turned me around again, and the tempo picked up. "You must
not know who you're talking to," he said, moving his left hand to his
left hip pocket. I figured I had better hurry up. Since the best defense
is a good offense, my steak knife was again in a ready position, instinc-
tively. I said to him, "Don't draw a knife on me," and I thrust my knife
forward, stabbing him several times before he could come up with his
left hand. He held on to me with his right hand and tried to advance,
87
Hi i (i/riflrmi/rr/ Snu idr
l„,i | pn.,],,..! )iim ,iw;iy. 1 Mill do not know what he was doing with
] N |, (,. |„,i | WM ,. M »rii»j; to Vic hurt any time and determined to beat
hli the punch.
\|,.]vih ir,i,l,»M-a Lee's light arm and pushed him into a corner,
wlirrr he f./l), bleeding heavily. He got up and charged me again, and
1 urntimicd to hold my knife ready. Then Melvin jumped between us,
,,nd Lee fainted in his arms. As Melvin took the knife from me, we
lumed to the. rest of the people, and somebody asked, "Why did yon
cut him?" Melvin said, "He cut him because he should have cut him,"
and wc backed out of the room. Melvin wanted me to press charges
against the man, but I would never go to the police.
' About two weeks later, Odell Lee swore out charges against me. I
don't know why he delayed so long, perhaps because he was in the
hospital for a few days. Maybe he was hesitant. He had been talk-
ing about getting me. I know, but I also heard that his wife had urged
him to press charges instead. To me. he was not the kind of character
who would go to the police. I saw him as a guy who would rather look
for me himself and deal right there. When he sent word that he was
after me, I started packing a gun. Instead, I was arrested at my house
on a warrant and indicted for assault with a deadly weapon. After I
pleaded not guilty, it went to a jury trial. I defended myself again.
I was found guilty as charged, but only because I lacked a jury of
mv peers. My defense was based on the grounds that I was not guilty,
either by white law or by the culture of the Black community. I did
not deny that I stabbed Odell Lee— I admitted it— but the law says
that when one sees or feels he is in imminent danger of great bodily-
harm or death, he may use whatever force necessary to defend himself.
If he kills his assailant, the homicide is justified. This section of the
California penal code is almost impossible for a man to defend himself
under unless he is a part of the oppressor class. The oppressed have no
chance, for people who sit on juries always think you could have picked
another means of defense. They cannot see or understand the danger.
A jury of my peers would have understood the situation and exon-
erated me. But the jurors in Alameda County come out of big houses
in the hills to pass judgment on the people whom they feel threaten
their "peace." When these people see a scar on the face, of a man on the
block, they have no understanding of its symbolism. Odell Lee got on
the stand and said that his scar resulted from an automobile accident.
88
Scoring
It may well have. But taking everything in context — his behavior at the
party, the move toward his left hip, and his scar — my peers would
never have convicted me.
Bobby Seale explains it brilliantly in Seize the Time: you may go
to a party and step on someone's shoes and apologize, and if the person
accepts the apology, then nothing happens. If you hear something
like "An apology won't shine my shoes," then you know he is really
saying, "I'm going to fight you." So you defend yourself, and in that
case striking first would be a defensive act, not an offensive one. You
are trying to get an advantage over an opponent who has already de-
clared war.
It is all a matter of life styles that spills over into the problem of
getting a jury of one's peers. If a truck driver is the defendant, should
there be only truck drivers on the jury, or all white racists on the jury
if a white racist is on trial? I say no. There is, nevertheless, an in-
ternal contradiction in a jury system that totally divides the accused
and his jury. Different cultures and life styles in America use the same
words with different shades of meaning. All belong to one society yet
live in different worlds.
I was found guilty of a felony, assault with a deadly weapon, and
faced a long jail sentence for the first time. Before and during the trial,
I had been out on bail for several months. I came to court each time I
was supposed to, but when I was convicted, the judge decided to re-
voke my bail immediately and place me in the custody of the bailiff
while he considered what sentence to impose. Wanting none of this, I
demanded to be sentenced right then. The judge said that if he sen-
tenced me then, I would be sent to the state penitentiary. I told him
to send me there immediately so that I could start serving my time.
He refused, asking me, "Do you realize what you're saying?" I said, "I
know what I'm saying, that you found me guilty. But I am not guilty,
and now I don't want to wait around a month serving dead time while
you think about it." No time was dead to me. It was all live time, life.
I felt that if the judge wanted to think about it for thirty days, he
should let me stay out on bail while he did so. But he would not. He
had me confined to the Alameda County Jail, a place I would get to
know well — very well.
While I was waiting, my family hired a lawyer to represent me at
the sentencing. The judge was a man named Leonard Dieden, who
89
Hi -roluttnli.inj HliU td,
, . , ,,, lVVVn . „,„,!, Ion defendants, any respect He has sent
« ,v ' 1 ' ,ww,s ; , . section of San Quentin is
i":; 1 ,, s' N^cs, they did. and he charged them
Z 00 t amrt one time. When I arrived for sentenang, he was
, ( " and g he worked his "white magic": the judge sentenced meto si
, u f. „il Even though I had been convicted of a
^ S the I tX ' ve m e Z for ^demeanor. This was to be-
^a^t is!2 in mv later capital trial, because the law says you
can reduce a felonv to a misdemeanor by serving less time. The pen
is one year in the county jail.
90
13
, . . all women, even the very phenomenal, want at
least a promise of brighter days, bright tomorrows. 1
have no tomorrows at all.
ceopce jackson, Soledad Brother
Loving
My relationships with women could be described as complex
or strange, depending on how you look at them. Varying influences
helped to form my attitude — the influence of my parents, of Chris-
tianity, of my older brothers, and, later, my reading and the theories
of Richard Thorne. Because these influences were often contra-
dictor)-, they led to certain conflicts in my feelings and involvements
with women, conflicts that were not to be resolved until the communal
life of the Black Panther Party displaced problematical individual re-
lationships.
When I was very young, I accepted the institution of marriage. As
I grew older and saw my father struggling to take care of a wife and
seven children, having to work at three jobs at once, I began to see that
the bourgeois family can be an imprisoning, enslaving, and suffocating
experience. Even though my mother and father loved each other deeply
and were happy together, I felt that I could not survive this kind of
binding commitment with all its worries and material insecurity.
Among the poor, social conditions and economic hardship frequently
change marriage into a troubled and fragile relationship. A strong love
between husband and wife can survive outside pressures, but that is
rare. Marriage usually becomes one more imprisoning experience with-
in the general prison of society.
91
/i, , nlullotmnj Stt<< till-
VI \ .Inn lil'. alion uii.ii'r were reinforced when I met Richard
II His tli'-niv nl i |hk«,.-smw>ic.s.s in the love relationship was
,,,!„. ,,]in K i,. ,,„'. Tli,' idea ilmt on,! person possesses the other, as in
| .,.,„•, Mi.iin.ii;,'. where "she's my woman and he's my man," was
im.nvcptalilr. II w;is too restrictive, too binding, and ultimately de-
• trUQtlve to the union itself. Often it absorbed all of a man's energies
ami did not leave him free to develop potential talents, to be creative,
or make a contribution in other areas of life. This argument— that a
family is a burden to a man— is developed in Bertrand Russell's cri-
tique of marriage and the family, His observations impressed me and
strengthened mv convictions about the drawbacks of conventional
marriage.
As a result of thinking and reading, I decided to remain unmarried.
This is a decision I do not regret, although it has caused me pain and
conflict from time to time and brought unhappiness to me and some of
the women whom I have loved.
After I moved out of Poor Boys Hall and had my own apartment, I
was involved with several beautiful young women, who loved me very
much. I loved them just as much. For a while, I accepted money and
favors from them, but only after I had explained that our relationship
probablv would not work because I was unprepared to follow the old
road. If they wanted to be with me, I told them, the}' would have to
do certain things. I never forced or persuaded them. As a matter of
fact, I said that in their place, I would not do it at all. I also explained
my principle of nonpossessiveness. I believed that if I was free, so
were thev, free to be involved with other men. I told them they could
have anv kind of relationship they wanted with someone else, but
that we had a special relationship that could not be duplicated with
any other person, no matter how many people we might be involved
with at the same time. This meant freedom for me, because I could
have three or four relationships at the same time without having to
keep one secret from the other.
I was living alone, and we would all be together at mv house at the
same time. Richard would bring his friends over, too, Together we
became almost a cult. We spread our ideas around Oakland City Col-
lege and Berkeley before group living and communalism became popu-
lar. I might even say that this was the origin of the Sexual Freedom
League, since Thorne went on from this to start that organization. The
92
Loving
girls found our experiments unusual and romantic and thought we
were very exciting. The main foundation of our relationship was mu-
tual honesty and the elimination of jealousy. Within a given period,
Richard and I would sleep with more than one woman to see if they
could deal with this without regressing to their old values, which we,
in our wisdom, considered outdated and bourgeois, as well as mentally
unhealthy.
Although much of this involved a new philosophy about the family,
another part of it was exploitative. I was serious about our attempt to
question matters through practice, but I also felt that we were taking
advantage of the women for practical reasons. Women paid my rent,
cooked my food, and did other things for me, while any money I came
bv was mine to keep.
Around this time I was pulling small-time armed robberies with
some of my "crime partners." We hid in the parking lots of expensive
white clubs, and when the people came out, we took their fur wraps,
wallets, rings, and watches. I never wanted to do these things on
a large scale. What I wanted was leisure time to read and make love.
My ideal was to be involved with a number of women — and I was. I
look back on this time as a kind of "God experience," when I was
"free" to do anything I wanted.
There was conflict, however, because, while I was exploiting
women, I was also fighting some internal values that would not let me
alone. Perhaps these arose from the Christian principles that had been
instilled in me from birth, perhaps from traditional mores, Still more
likely, the conflict arose out of my desire not to treat another human
being as an object. The fact that I found it necessary to explain to
women that they were at a disadvantage in their relationship with me
indicated that I needed some kind of defense mechanism against the
guilt I felt. Still, women made my freedom possible by sacrificing their
traditional ideas of husband and family.
While I loved many women, only twice did I feel an impulse to
marry. Even then, after serious consideration, I could not go through
with it. Every time I felt close to a woman, I knew it was time for the
relationship to end. No matter how deeply I felt, I could not share her
goals if they led to a compromise with society.
For a time I tried the pimping life, but this caused altogether too
much inner turmoil. Whenever I pimped a Black sister, my mind would
93
|„. I wHl, lUlitt of the slave experience— the racist dogs raping
Ul.u]. w ..„,.hi. I l».. Ri in to feel that if my conscience would not allow
,„, „, pimp Hlitck women, perhaps I should pimp white women— the
"runny," lint when I "turned out" a white woman and found there was
Mill ;L 'c risis of conscience, I realized that I could never pimp for a
living. With Black women the feeling was shame, because I was selling
my sister's body. With white women the feeling was not shame but
guilt, because I was now in the role of the oppressor. I had a "weak-
ness" for women. Therefore, I could never be harsh with them; I al-
ways identified with them and fell in love. I flirted with pimping for
only about nine months.
It was during this period that I met Dolores. She and I were to-
gether for five years, until I went to jail after the Odell Lee case.
Slowly, imperceptibly, I fell more deeply in love with her than I ever
had before, She had certain qualities that set her apart from all the
others; she was special, unique. Dolores was a beautiful Afro-Filipino
free-spirit child-woman, who lived with a passionate intensity. Life
with her was spontaneous, unpredictable, and filled with surprises, for
she had the unself-consciousness of an impulsive and mischievous child.
Sometimes, if I was reading or absorbed, she would steal up behind me
and jump on my back. She loved fighting games and played aggres-
sively; often Me'lvin and I had to retreat from a barrage of small stones
that came flying at us, accompanied by triumphant laughter and taunts.
Yet there was a deeper, more complex side to her nature, for she
was a creature of great contrasts. Dolores had an unusual gift for lan-
guage and a sensitivity to the nuances and subtleties of words. She
composed small poems that to me seemed remarkable. They revealed
an awareness of the tenuousness of all human involvements, and the
sense of despair that hovers constantly at the lover's threshold of con-
sciousness. Here is one she wrote for me;
The two of us are multitude;
Without you I am dead.
I'd rather not be
Than to be deceived
Bv the one who keeps me alive.
In our relationship there was an intense contradiction. I could live
with her but not in the context of conventional family life. During our
94
Loving
five years together we broke up from time to time, but never for more
than three months; some intense need always drove us back to each
other. In spite of her childlike qualities, Dolores was mature in many
ways. She was a hard worker and willing to support us, she really
understood and accepted my problem.
I was in conflict, wanting to do the things that are expected of a
man in our society, even trying a couple of times, without success. I
worked on a construction job once and at a cannery for a couple of
seasons, but I could not deal with work on a permanent basis. Often
I considered marrying Dolores, but to do so meant accepting the con-
ditions necessary to marriage in an oppressive situation. If two people
are together as a unit, rather than in some haphazard way, a certain
amount of security must exist. In the event of children they must sacri-
fice their time to have that security. I was afraid of that.
Many of my contemporaries were getting married in the hope of
securing a good job and raising a family. But their marriages soon
broke up because it cost so much to live and their jobs were so treach-
erously menial that all their time was spent grubbing for basic neces-
sities. Their dreams were crushed by the realities of their lives. When
I saw myself heading in that direction, I balked. By rejecting marriage
and a family I held on to my "freedom," but I lost the intimacy and
companionship of a woman — an experience that is probably as great
as, perhaps greater, than the freedom I wanted.
My inability to make a total commitment led Dolores to disaster.
Our years together, and our closeness, had created a deep dependence
in her, although I tried to maintain my own freedom in various ways.
One of these was to see other women. One night I brought another
woman to my parents' home; while we were there, Dolores unexpect-
edly came over. The other woman and I went out, leaving Dolores
there. Finally, about two in the morning, I left my companion and
returned to our apartment. Dolores was gone, After some frantic calls.
I made one to my cousin, who lived nearby. She told me Dolores had
taken forty sleeping pills. I rushed over and found Dolores uncon-
scious. An ambulance came and took her to the hospital. No one knew
if help had arrived in time. I rushed to the hospital. She was alive,
I should have seen the danger. Some of her poems had foreshad-
owed the self-destructive impulse. One of them, in particular, had a
somber, despairing quality:
95
Ucvi'liitluiuirij Suit ilk
Tin' jii^coiis of my conscience
M.ikc slwdmvs on the wall.
The cannibal that lives within my mind
I, naves no room for the imagination.
I regret just this.
My experience with Dolores reinforced, in the end, my conviction
that the demands two people make upon each other can be crippling
and destructive. No matter how much they love each other, the values
of our society conspire to add intolerable pressures to a binding rela-
tionship. The contradictions inherent in marriage make it all but im-
possible to survive.
These contradictions have been solved by the values of the Black
Panther Party and by the Party's communal life. The closeness of the
group and the shared sense of purpose transform us into a harmonious,
functioning body, working for the destruction of those conditions that
make people suffer. Our unity has transformed us to the point where
we have not compromised with the system; we have the closeness and
love of family life, the will to live in spite of cruel conditions. Con-
sciousness is the first step toward control of a situation. We feel free
as a group; we know what troubles us, and we act.
Bourgeois values define the family situation in America, give it cer-
tain goals. Oppressed and poor people who try to reach these goals fail
because of the very conditions that the bourgeoisie has established.
There is the dilemma. We need a family, because every man and
woman deserves the kind of spiritual support and unity a family pro-
vides. Black people try to reach the goals set by the dominant culture
and fail without knowing why.
How do you solve the situation? By staying outside the system,
living alone? I found that to be an outsider is to be alienated and
unhappy. In the Party we have formed a family, a fighting family that
is a vital unit in itself. We have no romantic and fictional notions about
getting married and living happily ever after behind a white picket
fence. We choose to live together for a common purpose, and together
we fight for our existence and our goals. Today we have the closeness,
the harmony and freedom that we sought so long.
96
Part Three
We believe that Black people will not be free until we
are able to determine our destiny.
14
Locked in jail, within a jail, my mind is still free. . . ■
What if a person was so oriented that the loss of no ma-
terial thing couid cause him mental disorganization?
This is the free agent.
George jackson, Soledad Brother
Freedom
Jail is an odd place to find freedom, but that was the place I
first found mine: in the Alameda County Jail in Oakland in 1964. This
jail is located on the tenth floor of the Alameda County Court House,
the huge, white building we call "Moby Dick." When I was falsely
convicted of the assault against Odell Lee, Judge Dieden sent me
there to await sentencing. Shortly after I arrived, I was made a trusty,
which gave me an opportunity to move about freely. Conditions were
not good; in fact, the place blew up a few weeks later, when the in-
mates refused to go on eating starches and split-pea soup at almost
every meal, and went on a food strike. I joined them. When we were
brought our split-pea soup, we hurled it back through the bars, all over
the walls, and refused to lock up in our cells.
I was the only trusty who took part in the strike, and because I
could move between cell blocks, they charged me with organizing it.
True, I had carried a few messages back and forth, but I was not an
organizer then, not that it mattered to the jail administration. Trusties
were supposed to go along with the Establishment in everything, and
since I could not do that, I was slapped with the organizing label and
put in the "hole" — what Black prisoners call the "soul breaker."
I was twentv-two years old, and I had been in jail before on various
99
Hi ' ij/llfl'i'lirlri/ Niiii ii/t'
|„ , i i|> I ;),u>, .intl prth l.uvrnv. My parents were pretty sick
,,) „ ,.. Jiil n le.'iis ,hm1 ill.- \vars lollowing, so I had to depend on
■ ■ M ,hi I,. . miie up I mm l.os Angeles, or wherever he was, to bail
iJnee I had been "given" to him, he came whenever he could.
i'.ui ii, 'iniN-., ] i miU! not find him. At any rate. I was no stranger to
fftj] b) Blihoxigh I had never been in extreme solitary confinement.
Wlthm jail, there are four levels of confinement: the main line,
Segregation, isolation, and solitary — the "soul breaker," You can be in
jail in jail, but the soul breaker is your "last" end of the world. In 1964,
there were two of these deprivation cells at the Alameda County Court
House; each was four and a half feet wide, by six feet long, by ten feet
high. The floor was dark red rubber tile, and the walls were black. If
the guards wanted to, they could turn on a light in the ceiling, but I
was always kept in the dark, and nude. That is part of the deprivation,
why the soul breaker is called a strip cell. Sometimes the prisoner
in the other cell would get a blanket, but they never gave me one.
He sometimes got toilet paper, too — the limit was two squares — and
when he begged for more, he was told no, that is part of the punish-
ment. There was no bunk, no washbasin, no toilet, nothing but bare
floors, bare walls, a solid steel door, and a round hole four inches in
diameter and six inches deep in the middle of the floor. The prisoner
was supposed to urinate and defecate in this hole.
A half-gallon milk carton filled with water was my liquid for the
week. Twice a day and always at night the guards brought a little cup
of cold split-pea soup, right out of the can. Sometimes during the day
they brought "fruit loaf," a patty of cooked vegetables mashed together
into a little ball. When I first went in there, I wanted to eat and stay
healthy, but soon I realized that was another trick, because when I ate
I had to defecate. At night no light came in under the door. I could not
even find the hole if I had wanted to. If I was desperate, I had to search
with my hand; when I found it, the hole was always slimy with the
filth that had gone in before. I was just like a mole looking for the sun;
I hated finding it when I did. After a few days the hole filled up and
overflowed, so that I could not lie down without wallowing in my own
waste. Once every week or two the guards ran a hose into the cell and
washed out the urine and defecation. This cleared the air for a while
and made it all right to take a deep breath. I had been told I would
break before the fifteen days were up. Most men did. After two or
100
Freedom
three days they would begin to scream and beg for someone to come
and take them out, and the captain would pay a visit and say, "We
don't want to treat you this way. Just come out now and abide by the
rules and don't be so arrogant. We'll treat you fairly. The doors here
are large." To tell the truth, after two or three days I was in bad shape.
Why I did not break I do not know. Stubbornness, probably. I did not
want to beg. Certainly mv resistance was not connected to any kind of
ideology or program. That came later. Anyway, I did not scream and
bee; I learned the secrets of survival.
°One secret was the same that Mahatma Gandhi learned— to take
little sips of nourishment, just enough to keep up one's strength, but
never enough to have to defecate until the fifteen days were up. That
wav I kept the air somewhat clean and did not have the overflow. I
did the same with water, taking little sips every few hours. My body
absorbed all of it, and I did not have to urinate.
There was another, more important secret, one that took longer
to learn. During the day a little light showed in the two-inch crack at
the bottom of the steel door. At night, as the sun went down and
the lights clicked off one by one, I heard all the cells closing, and all
the locks. I held my hands up in front of my face, and soon I could not
see them. For me,' that was the testing time, the time when I had to
save mvself or break.
Outside jail, the brain is always being bombarded by external
stimuli. These ordinary sights and sounds of life help to keep our
mental processes in order, rational. In deprivation, you have to some-
how replace the stimuli, provide an interior environment for yourself.
Ever since I was a little boy I have been able to overcome stress by-
calling up pleasant thoughts. So very soon I began to reflect on the
most soothing parts of my past, not to keep out any evil thoughts, but
to reinforce myself in some kind of rewarding experience. Here I
learned something. This was different.
When I had a pleasant memory, what was I to do with it? Should
I throw it out and get another or try to keep it to entertain myself as
long as possible? If you are not disciplined, a strange thing happens.
The pleasant thought comes, and then another and another, like quick
cuts flashing vividly across a movie screen. At first they are organized.
Then thev start to pick up speed, pushing in on top of one another,
going faster, faster, faster, faster. The pleasant thoughts are not so
101
Jirfri/f/Noiwri/ Sulfide
plne.n nw, iln-v ;in- Imnililc and grotesque caricatures, whirling
.11. • uml n, vim IhmiI. Stop] I heard myself say, stop, stop, stop. I did
niil seie;nn, I was able (o slop them. Now what do I do?
] .,(.,, led tu exercise, especially when I heard the jangle of keys as
the guards came with the split-pea soup and fruit loaf. I would not
.scream; 1 would not apologize, even though they came every day,
saying they would let me out if I gave in. When they were com-
ing, I would get up and start my calisthenics, and when the)' went
away, I would start the pleasant thoughts again. If I was too tired to
stand, I would lie down and find myself on my back. Later, I learned
that my position, with my back arched and only my shoulders and
tight buttocks touching the floor, was a Zen Buddhist posture, I did
not know it then, of course; I just found myself on my back. When
the thoughts started coming again, to entertain me, and when the same
thing happened with the speed-up, faster, faster, I would say, stop!
and start again.
Over a span of time — I do not know how long it took — I mastered
my thoughts. I could start them and stop them; I could slow them
down and speed them up. It was a very conscious exercise. For a while,
I feared I would lose control. I could not think; I could not stop think-
ing. Only later did I learn through practice to go at the speed I wanted.
I call them film clips, but they are really thought patterns, the most
vivid pictures of my family, girls, good times. Soon I could lie with
my back arched for hours on end, and I placed no importance on the
passage of time. Control. I learned to control my food, my body, and
my mind through a deliberate act of will,
After fifteen days the guards pulled me out and sent me back to a
regular cell for twenty-four hours, where I took a shower and saw a
medical doctor and a psychiatrist. They were worried that prisoners
would become mentally disorganized in such deprivation. Then, be-
cause I had not repented, they sent me back to the hole. By then it held
no fears for me. I had won my freedom.
Soul breakers exist because the authorities know that such condi-
tions would drive them to the breaking point, but when I resolved that
they would not conquer my will, I became stronger than they were.
I understood them better than they understood me. No longer depend-
ent on the things of the world. I felt really free for the first time in mv
life. In the past I had been like my jailers; I had pursued the goals of
capitalistic America. Now I had a higher freedom.
102
Most people who know me do not realize that I have been in and
out of jail for the past twelve years. They know only of my eleven
months in solitary in 1967, waiting for the murder trial to begin, and
the twenty-two months at the Penal Colony after that. But 1967 would
not have been possible without 1964. I could not have handled the
Penal Colony solitary without the soul breaker behind me. Therefore,
I cannot tell inexperienced young comrades to go into jail and into
solitary, that that is the way to defy the authorities and exercise their
freedom. I know what solitary can do to a man.
The strip cell has been outlawed throughout the United States.
Prisoners I talk to in California tell me it is no longer in use on the
West Coast. That was the work of Charles Garry, the lawyer who de-
fended me in 1968, when he fought the case of Warren Wells, a Black
Panther accused of shooting a policeman. The Superior Court of Cali-
fornia said it was an outrage to human decency to put any man
through such extreme deprivation. Of course, prisons have their ways,
and out there right now, somewhere, prisoners without lawyers are
probably lying in their own filth in the soul breaker.
I was in the hole for a month. My sentence, when it came, was for
six months on the county farm at Santa Rita, about fifty miles south of
Oakland. This is an honor camp with no walls, and the inmates are
not locked up. There is a barbed-wire fence, but anyone can easily
walk off during the daytime. The inmates work at tending livestock,
harvesting crops, and doing other farm work.
I was not in the honor camp long. A few days after I arrived, I had
a fight with a fat Black inmate named Bojack, who served in the mess
hall. Bojack was a diligent enforcer of small helpings, and I was a
"dipper." Whenever Bojack turned away, I would dip for more with
my spoon. One day he tried to prevent me from clipping, and I called
him for protecting the oppressor's interests and smashed him with a
steel tray. When they pulled me off him, I was hustled next door to
Graystone, the maximum security prison at Santa Rita.
Here, prisoners are locked up all day inside a stone building. Not
onlv that. I was put in solitary confinement for the remaining months
of my sentence. Because of my experience in the hole, I could survive.
Still, I did not submit willingly. The food was as bad in Graystone as it
had been in Alameda, and I constantly protested about that and the
lack of heat in my cell. Half the time we had no heat at all.
Wherever you go in prison there are disturbed inmates. One on my
103
tirrnlittlotumj Suicitir
him I .il S.niU Hita screamed night and day as loudly as he couI*d; his
vocal curds seemed made of iron. From time to time, the guards came
Inln I ii s cell and threw buckets of cold water on him. Gradually, as the
inmate wore down, the scream became a croak and then a squeak and
then a whisper, Long after he gave out, the sound lingered in my head.
The Santa Rita administration finally got disgusted with my contin-
ual complaints and protests and shipped me back to the jail in Oak-
land, where I spent the rest of my time in solitary. By then I was used
to the cold. Even now, I do not like any heat at all wherever I stay, no
matter what the outside temperature. Even so, the way I was treated
told me a lot about those who devised such punishment. I know them
well.
104
15
Seale is the heir to the early organizing efforts of young
blacks and whites in the rural South. He inherits ... the
demands of the early sixties students that fundamental con-
stitutional guarantees and promises — so long violated by
illegitimate white power — be immediately honored, while
reserving the right to attack the system itself.
jutjan bond, A Time to Speak, A Time to Act
Bobby Seale
Out of jail and back on the street in 1965, I again took up with
Bobby Seale. We had a lot to talk about; I had not seen him in more
than a year.
Bobby and I had not always agreed. In fact, we disagreed the first
time we met, during the Cuban missile crisis several years before. That
was the time President Kennedy was about to blow humanity off the
face of the earth because Russian ships were on their way to liberated
territory with arms for the people of Cuba. The Progressive Labor
Party was holding a rally outside Oakland City College to encourage
support for Fidel Castro, and I was there because I agreed with their
views. There were a number of speakers and one of them, Donald
Warden, launched into a lengthy praise of Fidel. He did this in his
usual opportunistic way, tooting his own horn. Warden was about
halfwav through his routine, criticizing civil rights organizations and
asking why we put our money into that kind of thing, when Bobby
challenged him, expressing opposition to Warden and strong support
for the position of the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People. He felt that the NAACP was the hope of Black
105
Hfvt'ltitioiittrif Sulfide
fiii i j 1 1 f - iiinl lirr.uiM' dI ili is, he supported the government and its
ruiivi ■ Oiilw. I rxpluiii'itl to him afterward that he was wrong
In support lli" gnVrnitm-iH and the civil rights organizations. Too much
niiiiii'V hful already been put into legal actions. There were enough
laws i ii i (hr hooks to permit Black people to deal with all their prob-
lems, liiil Ihe laws were not enforced. Therefore, trying to get more
laws was only a meaningless diversion from the real issues. This was
an argument I had heard in the Afro-American Association and in
Oakland by Malcolm X, who made the point over and over again.
Bobby began to think about this and later came over to my point of
view.
Whatever our early disagreements, Bobby and I were close by 1965.
Later. I recruited him into the Afro-American Association, but when I
left it, he continued to stick with Warden. At that time I was still going
through my identity crisis, looking for some understanding of myself
in relation to society. While I took a back seat in the Association and
refused to make a stand on any position, Bobby threw all his energy
into it, even after I left.
Still, we did not establish close contact until I got out of the hole
in 1965. At that point, Bobby was planning to get married, and he
needed a bed for his new apartment. I was breaking up with my girl
friend and had a bed I no longer wanted. I sold it to him, and we
hauled it to his home. That afternoon we began to talk; he told me that
he also had left the Afro-American Association to hook up with Ken
Freeman and his group, the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM),
Most of the brothers in this group attended Oakland City College, but
the organization was a sort of underground, off-campus operation.
They also had a front group called Soul Students Advisory Council,
which was a recognized campus organization. The RAM group was
more intellectual than active. They did a lot of talking about the rev-
olution and also some writing. Writing was almost a requirement for
membership, in fact, but Bobby was no writer. At the time I got out
of jail, Bobby had been involved in an argument with the members
and had been suspended for a time. Still angry about this, he told me
he intended to break with them. Like me, like thousands of us, Bobby-
was looking for something and not finding it.
Bobby and I entered a period of intense exploration, trying to solve
some of the ideological problems of the Black movement; partly, we
106
Bobby Sealc
needed to explain to our own satisfaction why no Black political or-
ganization had succeeded, The only one we thought had promised
long-term success was the Organization of Afro-American Unity started
by Malcolm X, but Malcolm had died too soon to pull his program
together. Malcolm's slogan had been "Freedom by any means neces-
sary," but nothing we saw was taking us there. We still had only a
vague conception of what freedom ought to mean to Black people,
except in abstract terms borrowed from politicians, and that did not
help the people on the block at all. Those loftv words were meant for
intellectuals and the bourgeoisie, who were already fairlv comfortable.
Much of our conversation revolved around groups in the San Fran-
cisco, Oakland, and Berkeley areas. Knowing the people who belonged
to them, we could evaluate both positive and negative aspects of their
characters and the nature of their organizations. While we respected
many of the moves these brothers had made, we felt that the negative
aspects of their movements overshadowed the positive ones.
We started throwing around ideas. None of the groups were able to
recruit and involve the very people they professed to represent — the
poor people in the community who never went to college, probably
were not even able to finish high school. Yet these were our peo-
ple; they were the vast majority of the Black population in the area.
Any group talking about Blacks was in fact talking about those low-
on the ladder in terms of well-being, self-respect, and the amount of
concern the government had for them. All of us were talking, and no-
body was reaching them.
Bobby had a talent that could help us. He was beginning to make
a name for himself in local productions as an actor and comedian. I
had seen him act in several plays written by brothers, and he was ter-
rific. I had never liked comedians, and I would not go out of my way
to hear one. If a person presents his material in a serious way and
uses humor to get his points across, he will have me laughing with all
the rest, but stand-up, wisecracking comedians leave me cold. Still, I
recognized Bobby's talent and I thought he could use it to relate to
people and persuade them in an incisive way, Often, when we were
rapping about our frustrations with particular people or groups, Bobby
would act out their madness. He could do expert imitations of Presi-
dent Kennedy, Martin Luther King, James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart,
and Chester of "Gunsmoke." He could also imitate down to the last
107
/(, ^.lutwium/ SuirUl.
,|, , nl 1 1m- l.n.lhrrs around us. I would crack my sides laughing
,„, | V | ,, ns) . his iwutiitions were so good, but because he could
„„„w ,,-rt;m, altitudes and characteristics so sharply. He caught all
t |„i, shovtc i„p. the way their ideas failed to meet the needs of the.
1> ''' We planned tc work through the Soul Students Advisory Council.
Mthough SSAC was just a front for RAM, it had one large advantage-
it was 'not an intellectual organization, and for that reason it would
appeal to manv lower-class brothers at City College. If these brothers
belonged to a group that gave them feelings of strength and respect,
thev could become effective participants. It was important to give them
something relevant to do, something not degrading. Soul Students was
normallv an ineffective and transitory group without a real program.
Only if 'something big was happening did their meetings attract a lot
of people. In the quiet times only two or three would show up.
Just then, however, Soul Students had a hot issue-the establish-
ment of a program of Afro-American history and culture in the college s
regular curriculum. Although it was a relevant program, the authorities
were resisting it tooth and nail. Every time we proposed a new course,
the>- countered with reasons why it could not be; at the same time,
ironically, they encouraged us to be "concerned." This was simple
trickery; they were dragging their feet.
Bobby and I saw this as an opportunity to move Soul Students a
step further by adopting a program of armed self-defense. We ap-
proached them, proposing a rally in front of the college in support of
the Afro-American history program. We pointed out that this would
be a different kind of rally— the Soul Student members would strap on
guns and march on the sidewalk in front of the school. Partly, the rally-
would express our opposition to police brutality, but it would also in-
timidate the authorities at City College who were resisting our pro-
gram. We were looking for a way to emphasize both college and com-
munity, to draw them in together. The police and the school authorities
needed a strong jolt from Blacks, and we knew this kind of action
would make them realize that the brothers meant business. Carrying
guns for self-defense was perfectly legal at the time.
We explained all this to Soul Students and showed them that we
did not intend to break any laws but were concerned that the organi-
zation start dealing with reality rather than sit around intellectu-
108
Bobby Seale
alizing and writing essays about the white man. We wanted them to
dedicate themselves to armed self-defense with the full understanding
that this was defense for the survival of Black people in general and in
particular for the cultural program we were trying to establish. As we
saw it, Blacks were getting ripped off everywhere. The police had
given us no choice but to defend ourselves against their brutality. On
the campus we were being miseducated; we had no courses dealing
with our real needs and problems, courses that taught us how to sur-
vive. Our program was designed to lead the brothers into self-defense
before we were completely wiped out physically and mentally.
The weapons were a recruiting device. I felt we could recruit Oak-
land City College students from the grass roots, people who did not
relate to campus organizations that were all too intellectual and of-
fered no effective program of action. Street people would relate to Soul
Students if they followed our plan; if the Black community has learned
to respect anything, it has learned to respect the gun.
We underestimated the difficulty of bringing the brothers around.
Soul Students completely rejected our program. Those brothers had
been so intimidated by police firepower they would not give any-
serious consideration to strapping on a gun, legal or not. After that set-
back we went to the Revolutionary Action Movement, They did not
have many members, just a few guys from the college campus who
talked a lot. We explained that by wearing and displaying weapons
the street brothers would relate to RAM's example of leadership. We
also talked about a new idea, patrolling the police, since the police
were the main perpetrators of violence against the community. We
went no further than those two tactics; armed self-defense and police
patrol. A more complete program was sure to get bogged down on
minor points. I just wanted them to adopt a program of self-defense,
and after that was worked out, we could then develop it more fully.
We were not aiming then at party organization; there were too many
organizations already. Our job was to make one of them relevant; that
would be contribution enough. However, we were having a lot of
trouble breaking through. RAM rejected the plan, too. They thought
it was "suicidal," that we could not survive a single day patrolling the
police.
This left us where we had been all along: nowhere.
109
16
As a sapling bent low stores energy for a violent back-
swing, blacks bent double by oppression have stored en-
ergy which will be released in the form of rage— black
rage, apocalyptic and final.
william crier and price cobbs, Black Rage
The Founding of the
Black Panther Party
All during this time, Bobby and I had no thought of the Black
Panther Party, no plan to head up any organization, and the ten-point
program was' still in the future. We had seen Watts rise up the pre-
vious year. We had seen how the police attacked the Watts community
after causing the trouble in the first place. We had seen Martin Luther
King come to Watts in an effort to calm the people, and we had seen
his philosophv of nonviolence rejected. Black people had been taught
nonviolence; it was deep in us. What good, however, was nonviolence
when the police were determined to rule by force? We had seen the
Oakland police and the California Highway Patrol begin to carry their
shotguns in full view as another way of striking fear into the com-
munity. We had seen all this, and we recognized that the rising con-
sciousness of Black people was almost at the point of explosion. One
must relate to the history of one's community and to its future. Every-
thing we had seen convinced us that our time had come.
Out of this need sprang the Black Panther Party. Bobby and I
finally had no choice but to form an organization that would involve
the lower-class brothers.
110
The Fowuling of iht: Mack I'mithrr I'.irh/
We worked it out in conversations and discussions. Mas! of tin 1
talk was casual. Bobby lived near the campus, and his living room be-
came a kind of headquarters. Although we were still involved with
Soul Students, we attended few meetings, and when we did go, our
presence was mostly disruptive; we raised questions that upset people.
Our conversations with each other became the important thing.
Brothers who had a free hour between classes and others who just
hung around the campus drifted in and out of Bobby's house. We
drank beer and wine and chewed over the political situation, our social
problems, and the merits and shortcomings of the other groups. We
also discussed the Black achievements of the past, particularly as they
helped us to understand current events.
In a sense, these sessions at Bobby's house were our political
education classes, and the Party sort of grew out of them. Even after
we formally organized we continued the discussions in our office.
By then we had moved on to include not only problems but possible
solutions.
We also read. The literature of oppressed people and their strug-
gles for liberation in other countries is very large, and we pored over
these books to see how their experiences might help us to understand
our plight. We read the work of Frantz Fanon, particularly The
Wretched of the Earth, the four volumes of Chairman Mao Tse-tung,
and Che Guevara's Guerrilla Warfare. Che and Mao were veterans of
people's wars, and they had worked out successful strategies for liber-
ating their people. We read these men's works because we saw them
as kinsmen; the oppressor who had controlled them was controlling us,
both directly and indirectly. We believed it was necessary to know how
they gained their freedom in order to go about getting ours. However,
we did not want merely to import ideas and strategies; we had to trans-
form what we learned into principles and methods acceptable to the
brothers on the block.
Mao and Fanon and Guevara all saw clearly that the people had
been stripped of their birthright and their dignity, not by any philoso-
phy or mere words, but at gunpoint. They had suffered a holdup by-
gangsters, and rape; for them, the only way to win freedom was to
meet force with force. At bottom, this is a form of self-defense. Al-
though that defense might at times take on characteristics of aggres-
sion, in the final analysis the people do not initiate; they simply re-
111
Nrrii/iiffiirii/ri/ .WV'i'iJr
tjmivl in wli.il lias lu-i'ii indicted upon them. People respect the
rxpi.-r.Moii 'il slrrii^lh and dignity displayed by men who refuse to
Iiow in Ihr weapons of oppression. Though it may mean death, these
mm will fight, because death with dignity is preferable to ignominy.
Then, too, there is always the chance that the oppressor will be over-
whelmed.
Fanon made a statement during the Algerian war that impressed
me; he said it was the "Year of the Boomerang," which is the third
phase of violence. At that point, the violence of the aggressor turns on
him and strikes a killing blow. Yet the oppressor does not understand
the process; he knows no more than he did in the first phase when he
launched the violence. The oppressed are always defensive; the op-
pressor is always aggressive and surprised when the people turn back
on him the force he has used against them.
Negroes with Guns by Robert Williams had a great influence on
the kind of party we developed. Williams had been active in Monroe,
North Carolina, with a program of armed self-defense that had enlisted
many in the community. However, I did not like the way he had called
on the federal government for assistance; we viewed the government as
an enemy, the agency of a ruling clique that controls the country. We
also had some literature about the Deacons for Defense and Justice in
Louisiana, the state where I was born. One of their leaders had come
through the Bay Area on a speaking and fund-raising tour, and we
liked what he said. The Deacons had done a good job of defending civil
rights marchers in their area, but they also had a habit of calling upon
the federal government to carry out this defense or at least to assist
them in defending the people who were upholding the law. The Dea-
cons even went so far as to enlist local sheriffs and police to defend the
° Robert Williams was the president of the NAACP in Monroe, North Carolina,
when he recruited its male members into an organization that advocated carrying
guns for self-defense, a move made necessary for protection against whites who
went on regular shooting sprees into the Black community, terrorizing its residents.
Williams was one of the first modern Black advocates of self-defense, and he wrote
articles supporting his position. In 1961, he fled from the United States when a
federal fugitive warrant was issued against him for kidnaping. Members of Wil-
liams's organization said that a white couple from the area, whom they had de-
tained for a short period, had been sent into the Black community at night to give
police an official excuse for harassment and violence. Williams went to Cuba, China,
and Tanzania, where he continued to write. In 1969, he returned to the United
States.
112
The Founding of the Black Panther I'mli/
marchers, with the threat that if law enforcement agencies would not
defend them, the Deacons would. We also viewed the; local police, the
National Guard, and the regular military as one huge armed group that
opposed the will of the people. In a boundary situation people have no
real defense except what they provide for themselves.
We read also the works of the freedom fighters who had done so
much for Black communities in the United States. Bobby had collected
all of Malcolm X's speeches and ideas from papers like The Militant
and Muhammad Speaks. These we studied carefully. Although Mal-
colm's program for the Organization of Afro-American Unity was never
put into operation, he has made it clear that Blacks ought to arm. Mal-
colm's influence was ever-present. We continue to believe that the
Black Panther Party exists in the spirit of Malcolm. Often it is difficult
to say exactly how an action or a program has been determined or in-
fluenced in a spiritual way. Such intangibles are hard to describe,
although they can be more significant than any precise influence. There-
fore, the words on this page cannot convey the effect that Malcolm has
had on the Black Panther Party, although, as far as I am concerned, the
Party is a living testament to his life work. I do not claim that the
Party has done what Malcolm would have done. Many others say that
their programs are Malcolm's programs. We do not say this, but Mal-
colm's spirit is in us.
From all of these things — the books, Malcolm's writings and spirit,
our analysis of the local situation — the idea of an organization was
forming. One day, quite suddenly, almost by chance, we found a name.
I had read a pamphlet about voter registration in Mississippi, how the
people in Lowndes County had armed themselves against Establish-
ment violence. Their political group, called the Lowndes County Free-
dom Organization, had a black panther for its symbol. A few days
later, while Bobby and I were rapping, I suggested that we use the
panther as our symbol and call our political vehicle the Black Panther
Party. The panther is a fierce animal, but he will not attack until he is
backed into a corner; then he will strike out. The image seemed ap-
propriate, and Bobby agreed without discussion. At this point, we
knew it was time to stop talking and begin organizing. Although we
had always wanted to get away from the intellectualizing and rhetoric
characteristic of other groups, at times we were as inactive as they
were. The time had come for action.
113
17
The only way to police a ghetto is to be oppressive. None
of the Police Commissioner's men, even with the best will
in the world, have any way of understanding the lives led
by the people they swagger about in twos and threes con-
trolling. Their very presence is an insult, and it would be,
even if they spent their entire day feeding gumdrops to
children. They represent the force of the white world, and
that world's real intentions are, simply, for that world's
criminal profit and ease, to keep the black man corraled up
here, in his place.
james Baldwin, "Fifth Avenue, Uptown,"
Nobody Knows My Name
Patrolling
It was the spring of 1966. Still without a definite program, we
were at the stage of testing ideas that would capture the imagination
of the community. We began, as always, by checking around with
the street brothers. We asked them if they would be interested in
forming the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, which would be
based upon defending the community against the aggression of the
power structure, including the military and the armed might of the
police. We informed the brothers of their right to possess weapons;
most of them were interested. Then we talked about how the people
are constantly intimidated by arrogant, belligerent police officers and
exactly what we could do about it. We went to pool halls and bars, all
the places where brothers congregate and talk.
I was prepared to give them legal advice. From my law courses at
114
PutruUiu;
Oakland City College and San Francisco Law School I was familial
with the California penal code and well versed in the laws relating to
weapons. I also had something very important at my disposal — the law-
library of the North Oakland Service Center, a community-center pov-
erty program where Bobby was working. The Center gave legal advice,
and there were many lawbooks on the shelves. Unfortunately, most of
them dealt with civil law, since the antipoverty program was not sup-
posed to advise poor people about criminal law. However, I made good
use of the books they had to run down the full legal situation to the
brothers on the street. We were doing what the poverty program
claimed to be doing but never had — giving help and counsel to poor
people about the things that crucially affected their lives.
All that summer we circulated in the Black communities of Rich-
mond, Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco. Wherever brothers gath-
ered, we talked with them about their right to arm. In general, they
were interested but skeptical about the weapons idea. They could not
see anyone walking around with a gun in full view. To recruit any
sizable number of street brothers, we would obviously have to do more
than talk. We needed to give practical applications of our theory, show-
them that we were not afraid of weapons and not afraid of death. The
way w'e finally won the brothers over was by patrolling the police with
arms.
Before we began the patrols, however, Bobby and I set down in writ-
ing a practical course of action. We could go no further without a pro-
gram, and we resolved to drop everything else, even though it might
take a while to come up with something viable. One day, we went to
the North Oakland Service Center to work it out. The Center was an
ideal place because of the books and the fact that we could work un-
disturbed. First, we pulled together all the books we had been reading
and dozens we had only heard about. We discussed Mao's program,
Cuba's program, and all the others, but concluded that we could not
follow any of them. Our unique situation required a unique program.
Although the relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed is
universal, forms of oppression vary. The ideas that mobilized the peo-
ple of Cuba and China sprang from their own history and political
structures. The practical parts of those programs could be carried out
only under a certain kind of oppression. Our program had to deal with
America.
115
In i olulicunnj Smrith
I st, u i.nl r.ipping I'll the essentia) points for the survival of Black
ami cp])i i-vn'il prijplf in the United States. Bobby wrote them down,
.unl fliwi we separated those ideas into two sections, "What We Want"
Und "W lul VVc believe." We split them up because the ideas fell natu-
ullv into twri distinct categories. It was necessary to explain why we
wanted certain things. At the same time, our goals were based on be-
liefs, and wc set those out, too. In the section on beliefs, we made it
clear that all the objective conditions necessary for attaining our goals
were already in existence, but that a number of societal factors stood
in our way. This was to help the people understand what was working
against them.
All in all, our ten-point program took about twenty minutes to
write. Thinking it would take days, we were prepared for a long ses-
sion, but we never got to the small mountain of books piled up around
us. We had come to an important realization; books could only point
in a general direction; the rest was up to us. This is the program we
wrote down;
October 1966
black panther party
platform and program
what we want
what we believe
1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our
Black Community.
We believe that Black people will not be free until we are able to deter-
mine our destiny.
2. We want full employment for our people,
We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to
give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the
white American businessmen will not give full employment, then the means
of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the com-
munity so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of
its people and give a high standard of living.
■3. We want an end to the robbery by the capitalist of our Black com-
munity.
116
Patrolling
We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are de-
manding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two
mules were promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass
murder of Black people. We will accept the payment in currency which will
be distributed to our many communities. The Germans are now aiding the
Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered
six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over
fifty million Black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand
that we make.
4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.
We believe that if the white landlords will not give decent housing to our
Black community, then the housing and the land should be made into co-
operatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make
decent housing for its people.
5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this
decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true his-
tory and our role in the present-day society.
We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowl-
edge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in
society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.
6. We want all Black men to be exempt from military service.
We believe that Black people should not be forced to fight in the military-
service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not
fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like Black people, are
being victimized by the white racist government of America. We will protect
ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist mili-
tary, by whatever means necessary.
7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER
of Black people.
We believe we can end police brutality in our Black community by organ-
izing Black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our Black
community from racist police oppression and brutality. The Second Amend-
ment to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We
therefore believe that all Black people should arm themselves for self-
defense.
8. We want freedom for all Black men held in federal, state, county and
city prisons and jails.
117
1
lirm>httltnniry Suiciile
VVn brlirve that all Black people should be released from the many jails
and piKoius because: they have not received a fair and impartial trial.
!J. We want all Black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by
a jury of their peer group or people from their Black communities, as defined
by the Constitution of the United States.
We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution
so that Black people will receive fair trials. The Fourteenth Amendment of
the U.S. Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A
peer is a pe-son from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, en-
vironmental, historical, and racial background. To do this the court will be
forced to select a jury from the Black community from which the Black de-
fendant came. We have been and are being tried by all-white juries that have
no understanding of the "average reasoning man" of the Black community.
10. We want kind, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, and
peace. And as our major political objective, a United Nations-supervised
plebiscite to be held throughout the Black colony in which only Black colo-
nial subjects will be allowed to participate, for the purpose of determining
the will of Black people as to their national destiny.
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one peo-
ple to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another,
and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station
to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect
to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes
which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal;
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that
among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure
these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just pow-
ers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of govern-
ment becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter
or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on
such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall
seem most likelv to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will
dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light
and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown, that man-
kind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are suiferable, than to right
themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when
a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object,
evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it
118
l'(itroIliri'[
is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards lor
their future security.
With the program on paper, we set up the structure of our organi-
zation. Bobby became Chairman, and I chose the position of Minister
of Defense. I was very happy with this arrangement; I do not like to
lead formally, and the Chairman has to conduct meetings and be in-
volved in administration, We also discussed having an advisory cabinet
as an information arm of the Party. We wanted this cabinet to do re-
search on each of the ten points and their relation to the community
and to advise the people on how to implement them. It seemed best to
weight the political wing of the Party with street brothers and the
advisory cabinet with middle-class Blacks who had the necessary
knowledge and skills. We were also seeking a functional unity between
middle-class Blacks and the street brothers. I asked my brother Melvin
to approach a few friends about serving on the advisory cabinet, but
when our plan became clear, they all refused, and the cabinet was
deferred.
The first member of the Black Panther Party, after Bobby and my-
self, was Little Bobby Hutton. Little Bobby had met Bobby Seale at the
North Oakland Service Center, where both were working, and he im-
mediately became enthusiastic about the nascent organization. Even
though he was only about fifteen years old then, he was a responsible
and mature person, determined to help the cause of Black people. He
became the Party's first treasurer. Little Bobby was the youngest of
seven children; his family had come to Oakland from Arkansas when
he was three years old. His parents were good, hard-working people,
but Bobby had endured the same hardships and humiliations to which
so many young Blacks in poor communities are subjected. Like many
of the brothers, he had been kicked out of school. Then he had gotten
a part-time job at the Service Center. After work he used to come
around to Bobby Seale's house to talk and learn to read. At the time
of his murder.t he was reading Black Reconstruction in America by
W. E. B. Du Bois.
° All titles in the Black Panther Party were eventually dropped, in July, 1972.
f On the night of April 6, 1968, two days after the murder of Dr. Martin Luther
King, Black Panthers riding in three cars transporting food and supplies for a bar-
becue picnic to be held in the Black community the next day were ambushed by
police. In the shoot-out that followed, Little Bobby Hutton and another Black
119
lU-i olutiimiry SttiriiU-
l(,il,l.,y whs ;i vrious revolutionary, but there was nothing grim
,,|,oiil liiin. lie had an infectious smile and a disarming quality that
mmir pcuj.lr love him. He died courageously, the first Black Panther
I,, nuke the supreme sacrifice for the people. We all attempt to carry
mi tin' work he began.
\VV started now to implement our ten-point program. Interested
primarily in educating and revolutionizing the community, we needed
to get their attention and give them something to identify with. This is
why the seventh point— police action— was the first program we em-
phasized. Point 7 stated: "We want an immediate end to police bru-
tality and murder of Black people." This is a major issue in every
Black community. The police have never been our protectors. Instead,
they act as the military arm of our oppressors and continually brutal-
ize us. Many communities have tried and failed to get civilian review-
boards to supervise the behavior of the police. In some places, organ-
ized citizen patrols have followed the police and observed them in
their community dealings. They take pictures and make tape recordings
of the encounters and report misbehavior to the authorities. However,
the authorities responsible for overseeing the police are policemen
themselves and usually side against the citizens. We recognized that it
was ridiculous to report the police to the police, but we hoped that by
raising encounters to a higher level, by patrolling the police with arms,
we would see a change in their behavior. Further, the community
would notice this and become interested in the Party. Thus our armed
patrols were also a means of recruiting.
At first, the patrols were a total success. Frightened and confused,
the police did not know how to respond, because they had never en-
countered patrols like this before. They were familiar with the com-
munity-alert patrols in other cities, but never before had guns been an
integral part of any patrol program. With weapons in our hands, we
were no longer their subjects but their equals.
Out on patrol, we stopped whenever we saw the police questioning
a brother or a sister. We would walk over with our weapons and ob-
Panther Party member, Eldridge Cleaver, were trapped by the police in the base-
ment of a house on Twenty-eighth Street in Oakland. The police fired upon the
house with rifles, pistols, shotguns, tear gas. and fire bombs for ninety minutes,
after which Little Bobby came out with his hands in the air. In cold blood, the
police shot him dead in the street. He was seventeen years old.
120
Patrolling
serve them from a "safe" distance so that the police could not say we
were interfering with the performance of their duty. We would ask the
community members if they were being abused. Most of the time, when
a policeman saw us coming, he slipped his book back into his pocket
got into his car, and left in a hurry. The citizens who had been stopped
were as amazed as the police at our sudden appearance.
I always carried lawbooks in my car. Sometimes, when a policeman
was harassing a citizen, I would stand off a little and read the relevant
portions of the penal code in a loud voice to all within hearing distance.
In doing this, we were helping to educate those who gathered to ob-
serve these incidents. If the policeman arrested the citrzen and took
him to the station, we would follow and immediately post bail. Many
community people could not believe at first that we had only their
interest at'heart. Nobody had ever given them any support or assistance
when the police harassed them, but here we were, proud Black men,
armed with guns and a knowledge of the law. Many citizens came
right out of jail and into the Party, and the statistics of murder and
brutality by policemen in our communities fell sharply.
Each day we went out on our watch. Sometimes we got on a police-
mans tail and followed him with our weapons in full view. If he darted
around the block or made a U-turn trying to follow us, we let him do
it until he got tired of that. Then, we would follow him again. Either
way, we took up a good bit of police time that otherwise would have
been spent in harassment.
\s our forces built up, we doubled the patrols, then tripled them;
we began to patrol everywhere-Oakland, Richmond, Berkeley, and
San Francisco. Most patrols were a part of our normal movement
around the community. We kept them random, however, so that the
police could not set a network to anticipate us. They never knew when
or where we were going to show up. It might be late at night or early
in the morning; some brothers would go on patrol the same time every
dav but never in a specific pattern or in the same geographical area.
The chief purpose of the patrols was to teach the community security
against the police, and we did not need a regular schedule for that.
We knew that no particular area could be totally defended; only the
community could effectively defend and eventually liberate itself. Our
aim was simply to teach them how to go about it. We passed out our
literature and ten-point program to the citizens who gathered, dis-
121
llrvnlutionunj Suu itlc
Mi.'.M-d Mxiiriiiinity defense, and educated them about their rights con-
i-i-i iiinjj; weapons. All along, the number of members grew.
'The Black Panthers were and are always required to keep their
.ictivjtics within legal bounds. This was emphasized repeatedly in our
political education classes and also when we taught weapons care. If
we overstepped legal bounds, the police would easily gain the upper
hand and be able to continue their intimidation. We also knew the
community was somewhat fearful of the gun and of the policeman who
had it. So, we studied the law about weapons and kept within our
rights. To be arrested for having weapons would be a setback to our
program of teaching the people their constitutional right to bear arms.
As long as we kept everything legal, the police could do nothing, and
the people would see that armed defense was a legitimate, constitutional
right. In this way, they would lose their doubts and fears and be able
to move against their oppressor.
It was not all observation and penal code reading on those patrols.
The police, invariably shocked to meet a cadre of disciplined and
armed Black men coming to the support of the community, reacted in
strange and unpredictable ways. In their fright, some of them became
children, cursing and insulting us. We responded in kind, calling them
swine and pigs, but never cursing — -this could be cause for arrest — and
we took care not to be arrested with our weapons. But we demon-
strated their cowardice to the community with our "shock-a-buku." ° It
was sometimes hilarious to see their reaction; they had always been
cock}' and sure of themselves as long as they had weapons to intimi-
date the unarmed community. When we equalized the situation, their
real cowardice was exposed.
Soon the}' began to retaliate. We expected this — they had to get
back at us in some way — and were prepared. The fact that we had
conquered our fear of death made it possible to face them under any
circumstances. The police began to keep a record of Black Panther
vehicles; whenever they spotted one, it would be stopped and investi-
gated for possible violations. This was a childish ploy, but it was the
police way. We always made sure our vehicles were clean, without
violations, and the police were usually hard-pressed to find any justi-
"Shock-a-buku" is a term we made up. In the Black community shock-a-buku is
a tactic of keeping the enemy off balance through sudden and unexpected maneu-
vers that push him toward his opponent's position.
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Patrolling
fication for stopping us, Since we were within the law, they soon re-
sorted to illegal tactics. I was stopped and questioned fort}' or fifty
times by police without being arrested or even getting a ticket in most
instances. The few times I did end up on the blotter it merely proved
how far they were willing to go. A policeman once stopped me and
examined my license and the car for any violation of the Motor Vehicle
Code. He spent about half an hour going over the vehicle, checking
lights, horn, tires, everything. Finally, he shook the rear license plate,
and a bolt dropped off, so he wrote out a ticket for a faulty license
plate.
Some encounters with the police were more dramatic. At times
they drew their guns and we drew ours, until we reached a sort of
.stand-off. This happened frequently to me. I often felt that someday
one of the police would go crazy and pull the trigger. Some of them
were so nervous that they looked as if they might shake a bullet out of
their pistols. I would rather have a brave man pull a gun on me, since
he is less likely to panic; but we were prepared for anything. Some-
times they threatened to shoot, thinking I would lose courage, but I
remembered the lessons of solitary confinement and assigned every
silly action its proper significance; they were afraid of us. It was as
simple as that. Each day we went forth fully aware that we might not
come home or see each other ever again. There is no closeness to equal
that.
In front of our first Black Panther office, on Fifty-eighth Street in
Oakland, a policeman once drew his gun and pointed it at me while I
sat in my car. When people gathered to observe, the police told them
to clear the area. I ignored the gun, got out of the car, and asked the
people to go into the Party office. They had a right to observe the po-
lice. Then I called the policeman an ignorant Georgia cracker who had
come West to get away from sharecropping. After that, I walked
around the car and spoke to the citizens about the police and about
every man's right to be armed. I took a chance there, but I figured the
policeman would not shoot me with all those eyes on him. He was
willing to shoot me without cause, I am sure, but not before so many
witnesses.
Another policeman admitted as much during an incident in Rich-
mond. I had stopped to watch a motorcycle cop question a citizen. He
was clearly edgy at my presence, but I stood off quietly at a reasonable
123
lift onitioiiiirij Sulfide
ili'. I. in. v with 1 1 iv shotgun in hand. After writing up the citizen, he rode
Ins miitim'Vilc over to me and asked if I wanted to press charges for
puller bruliilitv. .About a dozen people were standing around watching
us. "Arc you paranoid?" I replied. "Do you think you're important? Do
you think I would waste my time going down to the police station to
make a report on you? No. You're just a coward anyway." With that, I
got into my car. When he tried to hold my door open, I slammed it
shut and told him to get his hands off. By now people were laughing
at the cop, and rather than suffer further humiliation, he drove off,
steaming mad. About halfway down the street, he turned around and
came back; he wanted to do something, and he was about fifty shades
of red. Pulling up beside me, he stuck his head close and said, "If it
was night, you wouldn't do this." "You're right," I replied, "I sure
wouldn't, but you're threatening me now, aren't you?" He got a little
redder and kicked his machine into gear, and took off.
The police wanted me badly, but they needed to do their dirty work
out of view of the community. When a citizen was unarmed, they bru-
talized him any time, almost casually, but when he was prepared to
defend himself, the police became little more than criminals, working
at night.
On another occasion I stopped by the Black Panther office after
paying some bills for my father. Since I was taking care of family busi-
ness, I had not carried my shotgun with me — it was at home — but I
did have a dagger, fully sheathed, in my belt. In the office were two
comrades. Warren Tucker, a captain in the Party, and another member.
As we talked, an eleven-year-old boy burst into the office and said,
"The police are at my friend's house, and they're tearing up the place."
This house was only about three blocks away, so the two Black Pan-
thers and I hurried to the scene. Warren Tucker had a .45 pistol
strapped to his hip in full view, but the other two of us had no weap-
ons. We never kept weapons in the office, since we were there only
periodically.
When we arrived, we found three policemen in the house, turning
over couches and chairs, searching and pushing a little boy around
and shouting, "Where's the shotgun?" The boy kept saying, "I don't
have a shotgun," but the police went right on looking. I asked the
policeman who seemed to be. in charge if he had a search warrant, and
he answered that he did not need one because he was in "hot pursuit."
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Patrolling
Then he told me to leave the house. The little boy asked me to slay,
so I continued to question the police, telling them they had no right to
be there. The policeman finally turned on me. "You're going to get out
of here," he said. "No," I said, "you leave if you don't have a search
warrant."
In the middle of this argument the boy's father arrived and also
asked the police for a search warrant. When the police admitted they
did not have one, he ordered them out. As they started to leave, one of
the policemen stopped in the doorway and said to the father, "Why
are you telling us to get out? Why don't you get rid of these Panthers?
They're the troublemakers." The father replied, "Before this I didn't
like the Panthers. I had heard bad things about them, but in the last
few minutes I've changed my mind, because they helped my son when
you pushed him around."
The police became even more outraged at this. All their hostility
now turned toward us. As the whole group went down the steps
and out into the yard, more policemen arrived on the scene. The house
was directly across the street from Oakland City College, and the
dozen or so police cars had attracted a crowd that was milling about.
The policeman who had been ordered out of the house took new
courage at the sight of reinforcements. Walking over to me in the yard,
he came close, saying, "You are always making trouble for us." Coming
closer still, he growled at me in a low voice that could not be over-
heard, "You motherfucker." This was a regular police routine, a trans-
parent strategy. He wanted me to curse him before witnesses; then he
could arrest me. But I had learned to be cautious. After he called me a
motherfucker, he stood waiting for the explosion, but it did not come
in the way he expected. Instead, I called him a swine, a pig, a slimy
snake — everything I could think of without using profanity.
By now he was almost apoplectic. "You're talking to me like that
and you have a weapon. You're displaying a weapon in a rude and
threatening fashion." Then he turned to Warren Tucker— Warren's
gun was still in its holster — and said, "And so are you." As if on signal,
the fifteen policemen who had been standing around uncertainly
stormed the three of us and threw on handcuffs. They did not say they
were placing us under arrest. If they had, we would gladly have taken
the arrest under the circumstances without any resistance. From the
way we went hurtling off in the paddy wagon, with its siren wailing
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HcvoiutioiKinf Suirulr
.it it 3 [ m j J i . - * ■ em's ahead ami behind, you might have thought they had
Ij.n'.jvd a Mali, i capo. Alter we were booked, the)' searched us and
liiimd a peiikuile iu Warren Tucker's pocket, the kind Boy Scouts use,
,'in, thry dropped the charge of "displaying a weapon in a rude and
line. iteming manner" and charged him simply with carrying a con-
cealed weapon. Even that charge was eventually dropped.
This was the kind of harassment we went through over and over
again, simply because we chose to exercise our constitutional rights to
self-defense and stand up for the community. In spite of the fact that
we followed the law to the letter, we were arrested and convicted of
all sorts of minor trumped-up charges. They sought to frighten us and
turn the community against us, but what they did had the opposite
effect. For instance, after this encounter, we gained a number of new-
members from City College students who had watched the incident
and had seen how things really were. They had been skeptical about
us earlier because of the bad treatment we had received in the press,
but seeing is believing.
The policeman who started this particular incident testified against
me in 1968 in my trial for killing a policeman. When my attorney,
Charles Carry, questioned him under cross-examination, he admitted
his fear of the Black Panthers. He is six feet tall and weighs 250
pounds; I am five feet, ten and a half inches, and weigh 150 pounds;
yet he said that I "surrounded" him. Straying further from the facts,
he testified that he had not said anything to me, that, on the contrary,
he was too frightened to open his mouth. The Black Panthers allegedly-
frightened him by shaking high-powered rifles in his face, calling him a
pig, and threatening to kill him. He was fearful, he said, that I would
kill him with the dagger, though it was sheathed. He stated that I had
come right up to him, that I was "in his face," and, as he put it, "He
was all around me." So much for police testimony.
In addition to our patrols and confrontations with the police, I did
a lot of recruiting in pool halls and bars, sometimes working twelve to
sixteen hours a day. I passed out leaflets with our ten-point program,
explaining each point to all who would listen. Coing deep into the
community like this, I invariably became involved in whatever was
happening; this day-to-day contact became an important part of our
organizing effort. There is a bar-restaurant in North Oakland known as
the "Bosn's Locker"; I used to call it my office because I would some-
126
Patrolling
times sit in there for twenty hours straight talking with the people
who came in. Most of the time, I had my shotgun with me, if the
owners of the establishment did not object. If they did, I left it in my
car.
At other times I would go to City College or to the Oakland Skills
Center— anywhere people gathered. It was hard work, but not in the
sense of working at an ordinary job, with its deadly routine and sense
of futility in performing empty labor. It was work that had profound
significance for me; the very meaning of my life was in it, and it
brought me closer to the people.
This recruiting had an interesting ramification in that I tried to
transform many of the so-called criminal activities going on in the
street into something political, although this had to be done gradually.
Instead of trying to eliminate these activities— numbers, hot goods,
drugs— I attempted to channel them into significant community actions.
Black consciousness had generally reached a point where a man felt
guilty about exploiting the Black community. However, if his daily
activities for survival could be integrated with actions that undermined
the established order, he felt good about it. It gave him a feeling of
justification and strengthened his own sense of personal worth. Many
of the brothers who were burglarizing and participating in similar pur-
suits began to contribute weapons and material to community defense.
In order to survive they still had to sell their hot goods, but at the same
time they would pass some of the cash on to us. That way, ripping off
became more than just an individual thing.
Gradually the Black Panthers came to be accepted in the Bay Area
community. We had provided a needed example of strength and dig-
nity by showing people how to defend themselves. More important,
we lived among" them. They could see every day that with us the peo-
ple came first.
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18
Those who assert this kind of "independence" are usually
wedded to the doctrine of "me first" and are generally
wrong on the question of the relationship between the in-
dividual and the Party. Although in words they profess re-
spect for the Party, in practice they put themselves first and
the Party second. . . . What are these people after? They
are after fame and position and want to be in the limelight.
. . . It is their dishonesty that causes them to come to
grief.
chairman mao, Little Red Book
Eldridge Cleaver
One evening in early 1967, Bobby Seale called and asked me to
go with him to a radio station in downtown Oakland. He arrived with
Marvin Jackmon, a Black playwright who was in the process of be-
coming a Muslim. We had tried to recruit Jackmon into the Party, but
his Muslim beliefs forbade him to have anything to do with weapons.
He and another Muslim brother arrived with Bobby, driving the car
of Beverly Axelrod, a lawyer active in civil rights cases in California.
The purpose of the trip was to meet Eldridge Cleaver, an ex-convict"
of growing reputation, who would be interviewed that night. I had
heard of Eldridge's speeches in the Bay Area since his release from
prison in December, but we had never talked, and I had not yet read
Soul on Ice, which was receiving great critical acclaim, or any of his
other writings. I knew only that he was an ex-convict with plenty of
time behind him.
° Cleaver was released on parole from Soledad Prison to San Francisco on Decem-
ber 12, 1966, after serving nine years of a one-to-fourteen-year sentence for rape.
128
Ehiriilfr Clruvi-r
Because of Eldridge's past experience and his deep mvolvnnenl in
the movement, I was particularly eager to meet him. No ex-convict
could be all bad. While we drove to the radio station, wc listened to
Eldridge's discussion with the interviewer. I liked what he said about
his early life and his work in the movement since his release. He was
articulate, his insights were good, and he seemed to understand the
needs of the community and what Black people had to do to liberate
themselves. When we pulled up to the radio station, Eldridge was still
on the air.
Immediately after the interview, Eldridge and I fell into a long
discussion. It was not much of a dialogue, actually; Eldridge hardly
said a word. I tried to persuade him to join the Party then and there
by running down our ten-point program and convincing him that we
had developed Malcolm's ideas and were carrying them out. I ex-
plained that Malcolm's program had been rather vague since he had
not had the opportunity to lay it out clearly before he was cut down.
A lot of groups were springing up, claiming to bear his standard, but
we were the only ones who had armed ourselves and were teaching
self-defense to the community. This was Malcolm's program, and we
were serious about establishing it.
Eldridge only listened; every once in a while he would nod his
head in agreement and say, "I know." But he did not ask any questions
or comment one way or the other about the program. When I finished,
he told me that he was obligated to Malcolm's widow, Sister Betty
Shabazz, and that he had promised to work with her to carry out Mal-
colm's dream and make it a reality. Then he left.
I was puzzled by this first meeting. Perhaps he had not understood
anything I was saying, even though he seemed to by nods and phrases
of agreement. I figured that if he really understood, he would have
asked some questions or made a criticism or two. When a man is in-
terested, he wants to know more. Eldridge had been as silent as a
sphinx. After reading the chapter in Soul on Ice that deals with police
administration from the local to the international level, I realized that
Eldridge did not argue any of the points with me that night because
he understood all too well and agreed totally.
A few weeks later, we were together at a meeting in the office of
the "Paper Panthers" in San Francisco. This was a group of cultural
nationalists in San Francisco who called themselves the "Black Panther
Party of Northern California"; they had a similar group in Los Angeles.
129
Revolution/in/ Suicide
I do not know when they started or what their goals were, but David
Milliard labeled them the "Paper Panthers" because their activity was
confined li> a steady production of printed matter. Unlike Bobby and
me, the}' had not grown up on the block. They were more privileged.
Their office was close to the office of an organization called the
Black House that Eldridge and Marvin Jackmon had started in San
Francisco. This was just a large house in the Fillmore area where peo-
ple lived upstairs and used the first floor ( which had been converted
into a meeting room) for political and social activities, LeRoi Jones
(now Imamu Amiri Baraka) was teaching for a semester at San Fran-
cisco State, and he sometimes gave readings on Friday nights. Other
poets also read, and there was plenty of discussion and intellectual-
izing. It was Oakland and Berkeley all over again. As far as I could
see, Black House was exploiting Eldridge, who paid the rent and the
huge telephone bills. No one else was doing very much, just lying
around "becoming Black."
Early in February, 1967, all these groups banded together to spon-
sor a program in San Francisco honoring Malcolm on the anniversary
of his assassination. The guest of honor was to be Malcolm's widow,
Sister Betty Shabazz. They wanted to arrange some security for
her, since there was fear that she, too, might be assassinated. Bobbv
and I attended a meeting to organize an escort, and although we had a
good deal of contempt for the Paper Panthers, we agreed to join them
in providing security. Eldridge was at the meeting, too, silent as usual.
When details for the escort were worked out and the day arrived, we
joined the others in San Francisco and headed for the airport to meet
Sister Betty.
Before leaving Oakland, I had told the comrades that we were not
going to take any arrests on this trip. If anything happened, I said, we
would fight right down to the last man, but we definitely would not
give ourselves up to the police. We were going out there specifically
to provide a bodyguard for Sister Betty, and unless they were willing
to give up their lives, they ought not to come.
We made this decision for two reasons. First, she was the widow of
Brother Malcolm, our greatest leader and martyr, and the mother of
his beautiful children. We would not allow anything to happen to her
after the way the Establishment had so treacherously assassinated her
husband. Second, her cousin, Hakim Jamal, had told me that when she
visited Los Angeles, the police had run off Ron Karenga's group, which
130
Eldridge Cleaver
was providing an escort for her. They had left her standing alone in the
middle of the street. My specific orders were that noboclv was to be
arrested, because to be arrested was to leave her, and a violation of our
main purpose.
We proceeded to the airport. When her plane arrived, we formed
a circle around her and led her to the waiting cars. People were stand-
ing around staring and wondering what was going on. The airport
police were edgy and unhappy about our activity, but we knew what
we were doing and we knew the law. We were taking care of Mal-
colm's widow.
From the airport we took her to the office of Ramparts magazine,
in downtown San Francisco, for a meeting with Eldridge, Kenny Free-
man, Isaac Moore, and some others. While they talked, we remained
in an outer office, keeping out the police, who were lurking every-
where, When the group broke up, Sister Betty told us that she did not
want any pictures taken by reporters; therefore, as we left the building,
we held up copies of Ramparts around her. Dozens of reporters were
waiting outside, and about thirty policemen. We were ready.
A reporter named Chuck Banks from Channel 7 grabbed for my
magazine, but I held on to it and told him to let my property go. I had
my shotgun cradled in my right arm and the magazine in my left hand.
When he could not wrench the magazine away, he pushed it against
my chest. I dropped the magazine and hit him with a left hook; he
went down. Just before I hit Banks, I had told four brothers to get
Sister Betty out of there because I was sure, from the number of police
in the building, that something was cooking outside. We were de-
termined not to pull a Karenga. Finally, she made it to the car and
drove off. Then I turned my attention to the situation at hand, telling
the police to arrest Banks for hitting me in the chest and also for de-
stroying my property. The police had a predictable reply: "If we arrest
anybody, it will be you." That is when I told my men to spread out and
hit the street, surrounding the police. At this moment one of the Paper
Panthers, Roy Ballard, came running into the street without his weapon
and hollered something like "Don't point that gun!" I looked the head
policeman in the eye and said, "If you start drawing, this will be a
bloodbath." My shotgun was in a ready position, safety off, and a shell
in the chamber. The police had no shotguns, only revolvers. Had they
started something, we would have wiped them out.
This was the extent of the conversation with the police. Otherwise,
131
lin'ohilioiuin/ Sttifiilr
tlir ,iir w.is as (piii'I jis death. I made my statement to the policeman;
lie saw mv weapon and froze. When some of my comrades turned their
hacks to walk oil, I told them not to give the police a chance for
"justifiable homicide." Like others of its kind, the scene is chiseled in
my memory; I can still see every detail of this tense, brief confronta-
tion. And then we backed away to our cars, guns still held ready, and
drove off. We had kept our promise to Sister Betty.
We found out later about the Paper Panthers. Seeing how bad it
might be, Roy Ballard had fled inside. He gave his gun to a woman in
the office and told her to put it in her briefcase, then he hid, trembling.
He did not even leave with us. The Paper Panthers were simply
another front for RAM, good for nothing but running a mimeograph
machine and fat-mouthing. If Sister Betty had depended on them for
security, she would have been stranded.
A short time later, when the Malcolm memorial rally was over and
Sister Betty had left town, we learned that the Paper Panthers had
not carried loaded weapons that day, either at the airport or in front
of Ramparts. W e had stood down the police alone. Those fellows did
not even own any bullets. When I asked Ballard about this later, he
admitted it. (A few weeks after this we went to San Francisco, where
the Paper Panthers were having a fish fry, and issued an ultimatum:
they could merge with us or change their name or be annihilated.
When they said they would do none of these things, we waded in. I
took on one of them and hooked him in the jaw. It was a short battle,
ending a few moments later when somebody fired a shot in the air and
people scattered. After that, the Paper Panthers changed their name.)
After the Ramparts confrontation we returned to Black House and
relaxed until it was time for the memorial rally that night at Hunter's
Point Community Center in the middle of San Francisco's low-income
Black community. We did not see Sister Betty again until then, al-
though she wanted to meet us. The Paper Panthers had stolen her
away. They told her that we were all in the same partv, and that night
they escorted her to the rally, while we provided security. We were
supposed to speak during the program, but Kenny Freeman of RAM—
the master of ceremonies — froze us out.
On the way from Black House to the memorial rally, Eldridge rode
in the car with me, and while we drove he asked to join the Black
Panther Party, This surprised me. I had given up all hope that he
132
Eldridge Cleaver
would join because he had expressed no interest, and I never try to
recruit by keeping after people; once they have heard the program, it
is up to them. But Eldridge was a man who kept his peace. He had
apparently made up his mind to join much earlier when we went to
the Paper Panthers' office to talk about escorting Betty Shabazz.
My surprise quickly turned to pleasure. Eldridge had skills that
Bobby and I lacked, skills that were needed for our program. He was
an eloquent writer, and his past experiences would make him a strong
comrade for the difficult days ahead. I had no reservations about him,
although even then something struck me about our conversation that
only recently has begun to make sense. He kept calling me "Bobby"
and talking about how "that Newton really blew." A short time before,
I had been invited to speak on the mall at Provo Park in Berkeley but
had sent Alex Papillon in my place, Somehow, the newsmen had mis-
taken Papillon for me when the announcer used my name in telling
the people that I had sent him. To complicate matters further, Eldridge
had mistaken Alex Papillon for Bobby Seale, Alex had a gun strapped
to his side, and every time he made a strong point he would pat his
pistol. He became known as the "Pistol-patting Panther." I do not know-
how Eldridge was aware of this event — perhaps he was there — but as
far as he was concerned the pistol packer was Newton. And so in the
car he kept saying, "Newton sure did blow," talking about the fantastic
speech. I was so amused by this I let him go on, waiting to see how
long it would take Eldridge to get us straight.
I think his desire to belong was a cumulative thing, built slowly —
at the meeting about Betty Shabazz, at Provo Park, in front of Ram-
parts. I see now that Eldridge was not dedicated to helping Black
people but was in search of a strong manhood symbol. This was a
common misconception at the time — that the Party was searching for
badges of masculinity. In fact, the reverse is true: the Party acted as it
did because we were men. Man}' failed to perceive the difference. As
for Eldridge, at that stage of his life he was probing for his own man-
hood. The Party's uniforms, the guns, the street action all added up to
an image of strength. And so he left the Organization for Afro-Amer-
ican Unity and the Paper Panthers to join us in the late spring of 1967.
It must be said in all honesty that Eldridge at the beginning made
great contributions to the Party. He is a fine writer, an effective
speaker, and an intelligent and talented human being. We felt then
133
wnirilintioii would be to write for and edit The Black Panther
|Mp<T wl,,, ), uv began publishing in April, 1967. Bobbv Seale had
H up (he paper, which immediately became an important ve-
Wfil* fer communicating the truth about the Party and the community
Hut only three of us were working on it, which is a next-to-impossible
task for a publication running at least twelve pages an issue and some-
times up to twenty. Publishing first as a monthly, our goal was to have
it on the street every two weeks and, if possible, once a week El-
dndge took a good part of the workload.
I soon noticed, however, that Eldridge was not around when the
deadlines came; we used to have to "shock-a-buku" him into writing
and editing. Because he was a writer, I found his reluctance difficult
to understand. He seemed to work with enthusiasm only after some-
thing sensational had taken place, a shooting, perhaps, or when he was
?QRr tTT ° r ^ J ' aiL Afer B ° bb >' Hutt0n was ki]] ed, in April
1968 and Eldridge was sentenced to Vacaville, the paper appeared
regularly, every week. But once out of prison, he fell back into his old
unco-operative ways. He was always somewhat withdrawn, and worked
best by himself, doing his own thing in one wav or another. And the
newspaper suffered.
This kind of independence hurt the Party. It was essential that
everyone work together and pitch in, especially when we had a project
going. For instance. I wanted Eldridge to talk to Partv members par-
ticularly the newer and younger ones, about some of the topics he dis-
cussed w,th the Yippies, the Peace and Freedom Party, radical white
youth political organizations, and on campuses. I had great respect for
the insight and knowledge he had acquired through study and reading
but when I tried to persuade him to teach a class to the troops he re
fused. He never taught one class or attempted to organize anv pro-
grams. He was always off talking on radio and television and before
all sorts of groups that seemed more glamorous and exciting to him
Eldndge m.sunderstood the white radical movement. He exploited
their alienation and encouraged young whites to think of themselves as
munitv t * ^ th6m further aWa >' fr ° m their ™» com-
mumty At the same t,me, he seduced young Blacks into picturing
hemse ves as bohemian expatriates from middle-class "Babylon'' (a!
he poetically but mistakenly analogized superindustrial America) So
we became temporarily alien to the Black community, while the whit
134
Eldridge Cleaver
radicals were plunged deeper into their peculiar identity crisis.
Cleaver's genius for political and cultural schizophrenia infected us
all, Black and white, and the opportunity was missed for youth of both
races to express and make concrete their authentic underlying soli-
darity and love. This still remains to be done.
Relating as Bobby and I did to the lumpenproletariat of the Black
community, we were down on bohemians and white radicals. But when
Eldridge joined, he soon took us to meet the Diggers in San Francisco
at their store in Haight-Ashbury, and once there, we had no idea why
we had come. Eldridge had not explained anything. The store was in-
credibly disorganized. After fighting our way 'through piles of garbage,
we managed to have a discussion with some of the Diggers. It turned
out they wanted us to develop a peace force for them,' a kind of pro-
tective guard, because they were being harassed bv some of the low-
riders in the area. When this point came up, I tuned out. What right
had these people to ask us for protection? I told them to form their own
peace force.
Eldridge hung out a lot in Haight-Ashbury and on Telegraph Ave-
nue in Berkeley, and although we avoided further involvement with
the Diggers, before long we were attracting hippies and Yippies to the
Party. A lot of them were deep into drugs. Because Bobbv and I had
started out as Black nationalists and were influenced bv the Muslims
and Malcolm X, we steered clear of the drug scene. Unlike Eldridge
neither of us identified with Haight-Ashbury or Telegraph Avenue, and
especially not with drugs.
I had sought out Eldridge because he was an ex-convict thinking
he could not be all bad if he had pulled time. But mv trust and belief
in him were mistaken. He dealt several serious blows' to the Party not
only by welcoming hippies, but also by failing to use his voice to push
Black Panther programs or improve our paper or be involved with the
poor of the community or create a political vehicle. He talked only-
empty rhetoric about "dealing blows" and triggering sensational ac-
tions. All m all, Eldridge lived in a fantasy world.
As time passed, he drifted away from us and from the ideology and
aims of the Black Panther Party. Colossal events were to take place
events that would threaten our very existence, and after each of these
setbacks, Eldridge's real position became clearer and clearer although
for a long time I was reluctant to admit or even recognize the truth
135
lifnolutionunj Suicide
Brothers arc hound together by the revolutionary love we have for
• '.ii h oilier, .1 love forged through loyalty and trust. It is an element of
ilir Hl.u-k I'tintlicT Party that can never be destroyed. Yet eventually
Kldridgo bctrnyed this love and commitment in ways I once never be-
lieved possible.
136
19
It is not often that one encounters in any taLick ghetto
in this country a family that has not experienced ■.Dine
immediate contact with the corrupt judicial system .mil
a repressive prison apparatus. It is not onlv impossible
for a black revolutionary to get justice in the courts, but
black people in general have been the victims rather
than the recipients of bourgeois justice.
ANGELA davis, // They Come in the Morning
Denzil Dowell
North Richmond is an all-Black community of about 9,000 in-
habitants on the northwest side of the city of Richmond. It came into
being during World War II when this area was used to provide limited
and temporary housing for Blacks, like my father, who came from the
South to work in the shipyards. Kaiser Industries, the main employers
at the time, were responsible for the establishment of the community.
They expected the people to go back South after they were no longer
needed. But the South had little to offer, and the people had other
ideas. When they stayed, the Establishment found ways to punish
them. Most of North Richmond is gerrymandered out of the city
proper and cut off from any assistance from public agencies except
the Contra Costa County agencies. Many of these are run by racists
who do not want Blacks there. As a consequence, many people live in
poverty and hardship.
On one side of the community is a large garbage dump filled with
rats. On another, Standard Oil refineries pour out their wastes and
fumes on the community'. Some days it is hard to draw a breath with-
137
Revolutionary Suicide
out choking and coughing. The industrial needs of the area are obvi-
ously more important than the human needs of the people. No more
than two or three streets lead into North Richmond, and each of these
has a number of railroad tracks crossing it. This makes it difficult for
the people to get out when emergency situations arise. They have to
sit in their cars waiting for the freight trains to pass by. This limited
access to the community makes it possible for the police to seal off the
area any time they want, and they have used that power often.
About half the population is under nineteen years of age, a fact
that presents special problems in terms of education and youth pro-
grams, since there is a great need for these functions. Many youths
graduate from high school just as illiterate as I was, headed for the
social trash heap. Recently, in 1971, one of the new playgrounds built
by the people could not be used by children because the rats that came
from the dump and the creek terrorized them. Reports in the San
Francisco Chronicle indicated clearly that city officials believed the
people wanted the rats, and that is why they were there. North Rich-
mond is no different from countless Black communities in California
and the rest of the United States. Cut off, ignored, and forgotten, the
people are kept in a state of subjugation, especially by the police, who
treat the communities like colonies.
The family of Denzil Dowell lives in North Richmond, and it was
there, on April 1, 1967, that their son and brother was killed by officers
of the Sheriffs Department of Contra Costa County. He was twenty-
two years old. They said he was running away from a stolen car that
had been flagged down by the police. Because he was allegedly in the
act of committing a felony, his death was ruled "justifiable homicide."
We were introduced to the Dowell family after Denzil's death by
Mark Comfort, a bright, strong man with a long history of organizing
Blacks in the Oakland area. The Dowells had asked us to come to their
home because of dissatisfaction with the official treatment of Denzil's
death. Like most Black families, they recognized the treachery of the
police, but they knew how little could be done about Denzil's death
through established institutions. The whole Dowell family considered
themselves Black Panthers. Visiting them one Sunday afternoon, we
were touched to see the deep sorrow and sense of helplessness so com-
mon among Blacks under these circumstances. I had seen it many times
in my work, and we were to see it again and again as we became more
deeply involved in the life of the people.
138
Denzil Dowell
Mrs. Dowell, a beautiful and noble Black woman, told us about her
son's life. She had spent much of her time and energy trying to survive
in North Richmond, supporting her family and raising the children
right. She had done her best with what she had, and she had done a
good job, Yet nothing could be done about the schools and other in-
stitutions that blocked her children from reaching the goals they had
been taught to aim for. She was terribly upset about Denzil's death and
over the indifferent and contemptuous way the authorities treated it.
She knew that her son had been murdered in cold blood.
We began our investigation at the same time the police were carry-
ing out theirs. While they tried to establish a cover for their treachery,
we searched for the truth. Policemen were constantly coming to Mrs.
Dowell's house and treating her like dirt. They would knock on the
door, walk in, and search the premises any time they wanted. I hap-
pened to be at the house one day when they came. When Mrs. Dowell
answered the knock, a policeman pushed his way in, asking questions.
I grabbed my shotgun and stepped in front of her, telling him either
to produce a search warrant or leave. He stood for a minute, shocked,
then ran out to his car and drove off.
When we read the police report of the incident, we rejected it and
continued our own investigation, always carrving our weapons in full
view. Together with the Dowells we visited the spot where the murder
allegedly took place and checked every possible detail. From my study
of police methods in college, I came up with a number of inconsist-
encies in the official report. For example, the police claimed that
Denzil had jumped one fence and was about to jump another when he
was shot; but Denzil had a hip injury from an automobile accident and
could hardly have run, let alone jump fences. The lot he supposedly
ran across was an automobile junkyard full of garbage and oil, yet no
oil was found on his shoes. The police said that he bled to death after
being shot, but no pool of blood was noted at the site, or anywhere
else. We also learned that Denzil's brother and friends had found him
lying all alone. After shooting him, the police had made no effort to
summon medical aid or to save his life. All this was particularly sig-
nificant and disturbing in light of the fact that Denzil was known to
the police, and they had threatened to get him on a number of occa-
sions. In the dark, far from witnesses, they carried out their murderous
treachery.
The same thing happened to Little Bobby Hutton, to Fred Hamp-
139
Revolutionary Suicide
ton and Mark Clark in Chicago, to the students in the Orangeburg and
Jackson State massacres in the South. It has happened to manv thou-
sands of unknown Blacks throughout the history of this country, poor
and powerless victims, whose families were too terrorized or weak to
cry out against their oppressors. The police murder us outright and
call it justifiable homicide. They always cook up a story, but 3 simple
investigation will expose their lies. That is why we must disarm and
control the police in our communities if we want to survive.
When our investigation disproved the official story, we indicted the
police for the murder of Denzil Dowell and called a community meet-
ing to discuss our findings. We held a rally on the corner of Third
Street and Chesley in North Richmond on a Saturday afternoon, Our
troops with weapons at the ready were stationed on all four comers of
the intersection, The community was a little timid but proud to see
Black men take a stance in their interests, and when we arrived, every-
body was very receptive. They asked a number of questions about the
guns— if they were loaded and if carrying them was legal. W e ex-
plained our weapons policy and told them about their right to carry
arms. Then a remarkable thing happened, One by one, many of
the community members went home and got their guns and came to
join us. Even one old sister of seventy years or so was out there with
her shotgun.
When they learned of the meeting, the police were again afraid and
uncertain, One policeman was sitting in his car on the corner when we
arrived. They do that frequently in North Richmond, just drive up to
the corner of Third and Chesley and sit there, intimidating the people.
But when we arrived and took positions with our guns, followed bv a
crowd, he took off like a shot.
Bobby spoke first, and I followed. We ran down everything known
about the case and exposed the errors in the police version. The people
were impressed that some of their own had come forward to confront
the police with factual evidence. We called on the community to arm
and defend themselves against the racist dogs, stressing that it was
their right and we were there to teach them, not only in theory but also
through practice.
While we were talking, another policeman drove down Chesley
Street. When he saw the people gathered, he kept coming, but at the
first sight of our guns he turned around in the middle of the street and
sped away. The people cheered.
140
Denzil Dowell
Soon after, we had another meeting with the community to discuss
the case and what could be done about it. Now that we had presented
our findings, we wanted to move their consciousness to a higher level.
This meeting was held indoors to permit close discussion. At least two
attorneys were there, a white one from the poverty program and a
Black lawyer interested in the case. Neither of them took a strong
stand. The poverty-program lawyer agreed that Denzil's death was a
case of murder but said there was little he could do. Denzil Dowell
was dead; he could not stick his neck out too far, since he was hired
with public funds to assist the community.
They advised the family to go to Martinez, the county seat, and talk
to Sheriff Younger, who was in charge of the police patrolling the com-
munity. This seemed a good idea, and after the meeting we took our
arms and escorted the family to the sheriff's office. When we arrived,
the police had surrounded the building and blocked all the elevators.
They told us we could not enter with weapons, but we knew we were
not in violation of the law. We asked them to produce the law that
forbade us to enter the building with weapons. They could not do it.
Although they admitted there was no statute, they still would not give
us permission to enter. So we went inside anyway and insisted on see-
ing Younger. Police and sheriffs office personnel crowded into the ele-
vators and blocked the doors to the stairs. When we demanded they
arrest us or stand aside, they refused, saying they would not arrest us
because there was no violation, but they also were not going to permit
us to go any farther with our weapons,
This shows again that when the oppressor cannot get his will
through legal devices, he will act illegally. We were thoroughly out-
numbered and the family, already upset, still wanted to talk to
Younger. The Dowells asked us to leave our weapons in the car and
come in anyway, mistakenly thinking they would get somewhere by
talking. Out of respect to the familv we left the weapons behind and
escorted the family to the sheriff's office.
Younger refused to suspend the policeman who had killed Denzil.
Nor would he discuss the department policy about shooting suspects.
If we wanted change in our communities, he said, we ought to go to
Sacramento and petition the legislature to change the law. He said
that according to the law, even if Denzil Dowell was not armed (and
he was not; no weapon was ever found), "reasonable cause" existed
to believe that he was in the act of committing a felony. Therefore, the
141
Revolutionary Suicide
officer had a right to kill him. Despite the evidence we had found, the
sheriff said, this was the law, and if we did not like it. only the legis-
lature could help us.
After this interview the family saw even more clearly that no estab-
lished institution would deal justice in the death of their loved one.
Denzil had been executed by a policeman, and the law said that this
was legal if any "reasonable policeman" believed that a suspect was in
the act of committing a felony. This is a very bitter reality. The police-
men assigned to control us are not reasonable men. They are inhuman
madmen who see the Black community as a place of aberrant behavior
and who therefore feel "justified" in killing us in the dark of night.
No official investigation into the death of Denzil Dowell was ever
held, despite a promise from the district attorney's office in Martinez.
In the public records Denzil is just another dead suspect, branded as
guilty by a corrupt, uncaring police department and an indifferent legal
system. The fact that his family mourned his loss or that his name was
never cleared does not move them. It was the same old story.
The Black Panther Party had done as much as it could in dealing
with the authorities. But another avenue was open to us. We could go
beyond Martinez and take our investigation of Denzil's case to the
people. Bobby suggested that we put out a leaflet describing the rally
and what the Black Panther Party was trying to do for the Dowell
family, The boldly headlined leaflet dealt with all aspects of the mur-
der. This was our first newspaper, and when we held it in our hands,
it seemed we had taken down another barrier between the Black
Panthers and the community.
We had never even thought of putting out a newspaper before.
Words on paper had always seemed futile. But the Dowell case
prompted us to find a way to inform the community about the facts
and mobilize them to action. Lacking access to radio, television, or any
of the other mass media, we needed an alternative means of communi-
cation. No one would do it for us. The Party had only five or six full-
time regulars, but we relied on the community to help us out. Many
people knew Denzil Dowell personally and willingly pitched in.
Most of the labor for the first paper was contributed by a hippie
underground mimeographing outfit in San Francisco. This was the
time when underground newspapers were just beginning: if you took
material to them, they would print it for you on an electric stenciling
142
Denzil Dowell
machine. We bought supplies — paper, ink, and staples' — and put the
leaflet together. Then we took it into the community.
We tried to pay paperboys to insert our paper into the Richmond
Independent, the Oakland Tribune, and the San Francisco Chronicle
before they delivered them, but when they saw what our sheet was
about, they did it for nothing, After delivering their own papers, they
went around and passed out ours. We circulated about 3,000 the first
time, asking for a donation of ten cents. This went into a fund for the
funeral expenses of the Dowell family and also for the costs of print-
ing the paper. If anyone did not have ten cents, we gave him a paper
anyway and asked him to read it. But most people gave.
Besides North Richmond we distributed the paper in Parchester
Village, a small Black settlement about a mile north, and also in some
of the Black sections of South Richmond, We walked everywhere, pass-
ing out newspapers, taking them from a borrowed van that went along-
side us mile after mile.
We were an unusual sight in Richmond, or any other place, dressed
in our black leather jackets, wearing black berets and gloves, and carry-
ing shotguns over our shoulders. Bobby always strapped a .45 pistol to
his side. People would stop and call to us, asking what we were dis-
tributing. This was a good example of our form of armed propaganda.
I say "our form" because it was not exactly the way it happened in
Cuba. The Cuban people, impressed by the successes of Castro's
guerrillas, left their homes to follow him. Thus, for Castro, guerrilla
warfare was a good form of propaganda. Walking armed through Rich-
mond was our propaganda. People showed respect for the Party, not
only by wanting to read about Denzil Dowell, but also by wanting to
learn more about us. This had always been our aim— to arouse in-
terest in the case and in the Party. Then we could go on to explain the
necessity for armed self-defense, an idea that was not hard to put
across since the people knew the problems and had been looking for
solutions.
The Denzil Dowell case was critical to the development of the
Black Panther Party. It led to our first national exposure, and it also
helped us launch our paper, which was a way of interpreting events
to the community from a Black perspective. Our Intercommunal News
Service and weekly paper, The Black Panther, have become central in
the Black Panther survival programs. So, in one sense, Denzil Dowell's
143
Revoltitiaiwrij Suicide
dcntli was not in vain. Every issue continues the struggle we began in
his I'an.si'. In a way, The Black Panther newspaper is a living memorial
Id him.
144
20
What reaches them
Making them ill at ease, fearful?
Today they shout prohibition at you
"Thou shalt not this"
"Thou shalt not that"
"Reserved for whites only"
You laugh.
One thing they cannot prohibit —
The strong men . . . coming on
The strong men gittin' stronger,
Strong men , . .
Stronger . . .
sterling a. brows', "Strong Men"
Sacramento and the
"Panther Bill"
Bobby and I look back on the early days of the Black Panthers
with nostaliga. It was a time of discovery and enthusiasm; we had hit
on something unique. By standing up to the police as equals, even
holding them oS, and yet remaining within the law, we had demon-
strated Black pride to the community in a concrete way. Everywhere
we went we caused traffic jams. People constantly stopped us to say
how much they respected our courage. The idea of armed self-defense
as a community policy was still new and a little intimidating to them;
but it also made them think. More important, it created a feeling of
solidarity. When we saw how Black citizens reacted to our movement,
145
Revolutionary Suicide
\\-f were greatly encouraged. Despite the ever-present danger of re-
taliation, the risks were more than worth it. At that time, however, our
activities were confined to a small area, and we wanted Black people
throughout the country to know the Oakland story.
In April, 1967, we were invited to appear on a radio talk show in
Oakland, the kind where people phone in questions and make com-
ments. Early in the program we explained our ten-point program, whv
we were focusing on Point 7, and why it was necessary for Black men
to arm themselves. We also made it clear that we were within our
constitutional rights. Hundreds of calls poured in — the lines were
jammed. Some people agreed with us; others disputed our points. We
welcomed the discussion, because criticism helped us to find weak-
nesses in our program and to sharpen our position.
One of the callers was Donald Mulford, a conservative Republican
state assemblyman from Piedmont, one of the wealthy, white sections
of Oakland. Mulford was so close to Oakland's power structure that his
call could only mean he saw political profit in attacking the Black
Panthers. Pie told us that he planned to introduce a bill into the state
legislature to make it illegal for us to patrol with our weapons. It was
a bill, he said, that would "get" the Black Panthers. Mulford's call was
a logical response of the system. We knew how the system operated. If
we used the laws in our own interest and against theirs, then the power
structure would simply change the laws. Mulford was more than will-
ing to be the agent of change.
A few days later, the paper carried a story about Mulford's "Pan-
ther bill." In its particulars it was what we had expected— a bill in-
tended to suppress the people's constitutional right to bear arms. Until
then, white men had owned and carried weapons with impunity.
Groups like the Minutemen and the Rangers in Richmond were known
to have arsenals, but nobody introduced bills against them. Mulford
had been asked by the Oakland police to introduce this bill because
some "young Black toughs," as they called us, were walking around
with guns, The bill was further evidence of this country's vicious double
standard against Blacks. The usual pattern of white racism was grad-
ually being put into effect. They would escalate the killing of Blacks,
but this time the police would do the job that the Ku Klux Klan had
done in the past,
The Black Panthers have never viewed such paramilitary groups
146
© 1973 Stephen Shame-
Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton
Sacramento and the "Panther Bill"
as the Ku Klux Klan or the Minutemen as particularly dangerous. The
real danger comes from highly organized Establishment forces — the
local police, the National Guard, and the United States military, They
were the ones who devastated Watts and killed innocent people. In
comparison to them the paramilitary groups are insignificant. In fact,
these groups are hardly organized at all. It is the uniformed men who
are dangerous and who come into our communities every day to com-
mit violence against us, knowing that the laws will protect them.
Bobby Seale and I discussed the Mulford bill against his background.
Sheriff Younger had suggested, facetiously, that the Dowell family
attempt to get their case heard at the state capitol. The Dowell family
only wanted some good to come out of all the grief inflicted on them.
We knew that the Dowells would get no better consideration in Sacra-
mento than they had received from Younger. The legislators would
probably tell them to go to the governor, and the governor would
point to Washington.
Institutions work this way. A son is murdered by the police, and
nothing is done. The institutions send the victim's family on a merry-
go-round, going from one agency to another, until they wear out
and give up. This is a very effective way to beat down poor and
oppressed people, who do not have the time to prosecute their cases.
Time is money to poor people. To go to Sacramento means loss of a
day's pav — often a loss of job. If this is a democracy, obviously it is a
bourgeois democracy limited to the middle and upper classes. Only
they can afford to participate in it.
Knowing all this, we nonetheless made plans to go to Sacramento,
That we would not change any laws was irrelevant, and all of us —
Black Panthers and Dowells — realized that from the start. Since we
were resigned to a runaround in Sacramento, we decided to raise the
encounter to a higher level in the hope of warning people about the
dangers in the Mulford bill and the ideas behind it. A national outcry
would help the Dowell family by showing them that some good had
come from their tragedy; also, it might mobilize our community even
more.
Dozens of reporters and photographers haunt the capitol waiting
for a story. This made it the perfect forum for our proclamation. If the
legislators got the message, too, well and good. But our primary pur-
pose was to deliver it to the people. Actually, several groups went:
147
Rcvoluliotitinj Suicide
linn in live im-usl >fi's tif the Duwell family; a group of brothers from
K.»M Oukliuid. mitoil bv Mark Comfort, and the Black Panthers.
I 1 1.- Hind Panthers and ( lomfort's cadre were armed.
I In- Party agreed that 1 ought not to make the trip for two reasons.
Imi '.l, I was on probation from the Odell Lee case, and they did not
■■..II it in jeopardize my freedom. Second, if any arrests were made in
SiUTanienU), someone should be available to raise bail money and do
wlialevor else was necessary.
Before they left. I prepared Executive Mandate Number One,
which was to be our message to the Black communities. It read;
The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense calls upon the American people in
general, and Black people in particular, to take careful note of the racist Cali-
fornia Legislature now considering legislation aimed at keeping Black peo-
ple disarmed and powerless while racist police agencies throughout the coun-
try intensify the terror, brutality, murder, and repression of Black people.
At the same time that the American Government is waging a racist war
of genocide in Vietnam the concentration camps in which Japanese-Ameri-
cans were interned during World War II are being renovated and expanded.
Since America has historically reserved its most barbaric treatment for non-
white people, we are forced to conclude that these concentration camps are
being prepared for Black people who are determined to gain their freedom
by any means necessary. The enslavement of Black people at the very found-
ing of this country, the genocide practiced on the American Indians and the
confinement of the survivors on reservations, the savage lynching of thou-
sands of Black men and women, the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, and now the cowardly massacre in Vietnam all testify to the
fact that toward people of color the racist power structure of America has
but one policy: repression, genocide, terror, and the big stick.
Black people have begged, prayed, petitioned and demonstrated, among
other things, to get the racist power structure of America to right the wrongs
which have historically been perpetrated against Black people. All of these
efforts have been answered by more repression, deceit, and hypocrisy, As the
aggression of the racist American Government escalates in Vietnam, the
police agencies of America escalate the repression of Black people through-
out the ghettos of America. Vicious police dogs, cattle prods, and increased
patrols have become familiar sights in Black communities. City Hal! turns a
deaf ear to the pleas of Black people for relief from this increasing terror.
The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense believes that the time has
come for Black people to arm themselves against this terror before it is too
late. The pending Mulford Act brings the hour of doom one step nearer. A
148
Sacramento and the "Panther Bill"
people who have suffered so much for so long at the hands of a racist society
must draw the line somewhere. We believe that the Black communities of
America must rise up as one man to halt the progression of a trend that leads
inevitably to their total destruction.
When I gave Bobby his instructions, I impressed upon him that our
main purpose was to deliver the message to the people. If he was fired
upon, he should return the fire. If a gun was drawn on him and it was
his interpretation that the gun was drawn in anger, he was to use
whatever means necessary to defend himself. His instructions were
not to fire or take the offensive unless in imminent danger. If they at-
tempted to arrest him, he was to take the arrest as long as he had
delivered the message. The main thing was to deliver the message. In
stressing these points, I told him that if he was invited in or allowed
inside the legislature, he was to read the message inside, but if it was
against the rules to enter the legislature, or if measures were taken to
block him, then he was not to enter, but to read the message from the
capital steps.
The Black Panther troops rolled out for Sacramento early on the
morning of May 2. As soon as they left, I went to my mother's house. I
had promised to mow her lawn that day. But I took a portable radio
along and put it on the front step to listen for news; in the house I
turned the television set on and asked my mother to keep an eye on it.
Then I started mowing.
About noon a bulletin interrupted the radio program. It told of
brothers at the capitol with weapons. My mother called out to me that
all channels were showing the event. I ran into the house, and there
was Bobby reading the mandate. The message was definitely going
out. Bobby read it twice, but the press and the people assembled were
so amazed at the Black Panthers' presence, and particularly the weap-
ons, that few appeared to hear the important thing, They were con-
centrating on the weapons. We had hoped that after the weapons
gained their attention they would listen to the message.
Later, another bulletin came on saying that the brothers had been
arrested, Bobby for carrying a concealed weapon — although he was
wearing his gun openly on his hip. Some of the other brothers were
charged with failing to remove the rounds from the chambers of their
guns when they put their weapons back in the car, I got on the phone
and finally made contact with one of the Black Panther women who
149
Rr.vuluthmunj Suiuide
had )'<>]»■ along, She told me what had happened, and I began to ini-
li.iii' ( In ■ nc.M phase ol our plan — raising bail money. That night I went
.1 local radio station, whore a talk show was on. People calling in
if ilisnisf, the incident had been told that I was in jail, and I decided
flic best way to deal with that was by confrontation. So I went in there,
•••• Malcolm would have done, and asked for equal air time. One of
(lie startled program directors looked at me and said, "Well, you're
ml oi in jail." I said, "Yes, I am in jail, but let me have equal time
anyway."
On the air I explained the Sacramento ploy. My explanation was
not very effective, I felt, because people who call these shows are al-
ways more interested in themselves than in issues, and you have to
fight through that first. But I was able to make an appeal for money.
We were faced with S50.000 bail in Sacramento, and within twenty-
four hours I had raised the 55,000 needed to get the troops back on
the streets. Our plans had worked exactly as we hoped.
Looking back, I think our tactic at Sacramento was correct at that
time, but it was also a mistake in a way. It was the first time in our
brief existence that an armed group of Black Panthers had been ar-
rested, and it was a turning point in police perceptions. We took the
arrests because we had a higher purpose. But it was not until then
that the police started attempting to disarm the Party. They leveled
shotguns on the brothers, handcuffed them, and generally pushed
them around. I had given orders not to fire unless fired upon. Maybe
the order should have been to fire on everybody in there; then thev
would have realized we were serious. But our purpose was not to kill;
it was to inform, to let the nation know where the Partv stood. The
police, however, took it to mean that the Party was only a front with
weapons, that we would not defend ourselves. This attitude caused a
number of problems for us, and it took some time to restore caution
to the police after Sacramento. Now, everything is as it used to be,
because they know they will have a fight on their hands if they try to
attack us.
Sacramento was certainly a success, however, in attracting national
attention; even those who did not hear the complete message saw the
arms, and this conveyed enough to Black people. The Bay Area became
more aware of the Party, and soon we had more members than we
could handle. From all across the country calls came to us about estab-
150
Sacramento and the "Panther Mi!'
Iishing chapters and branches; we could hardly keep track ol the re-
quests. In a matter of months we went from a small Bay Area group |<
a national organization, and we began moving to implement our ten-
point program.
151
21
I have made up my mind, wherever I go I shall go as a
man and not as a slave. ... I shall always be courteous
and mild in deportment towards all with whom I come
in contact, at the same time firmly and constantly en-
deavouring to assert my equal right as a man and a
brother.
Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom
Growing Pains
The Mulford bill passed the California legislature in July, 1967,
by a huge majority. As soon as the law was changed, making it illegal
to carry loaded weapons, we stopped the armed patrols. The police
understood this to mean that we were ready to submit, and the}'
stepped up their campaign of harassment. Only a month after the
Sacramento trip, we were subjected to another stupid and childish
incident.
One night in June a bail-fund party was held in Richmond. As soon
as we arrived, the police miraculously appeared, but remained outside
in their parked cars. This was an ominous sign. We decided to ignore
them, however, and remained inside all evening having a fine party.
When the party began breaking up about 2:00 a.m., we decided to stay
a while longer to avoid trouble, since we thought the police might leave
when the place emptied out a little. But it turned out they wanted us,
the Black Panthers. It became a waiting game: the police cut their
motors and lights and sat in the darkness; we stayed inside and went
right on enjoying ourselves.
Finally, all of us had to leave, about 5:00 a.m.; we came out and
152
(iroiciuL!, Paiu.s
got into our cars. One of the Black Panther members, John Sloane,
made a U-turn in the middle of the block and drove off, away from the
police. To my knowledge, such a turn in a residential area is perfectly
legal, but the police pursued him, stopped him about a block away
from the house, and began writing out a ticket. We stopped our cars
a reasonable distance from this exchange and got out to watch.
Sloane refused to sign for the ticket. He had been drinking at the
part}', and this may have affected his behavior, but at any rate he
would not sign where he was supposed to. When an argument broke
out, I walked over to his car and said, "Sign the ticket. If there's any
problem, we'll take it up in court, but sign the ticket." Sloane went
right on arguing, and soon seven or eight more policemen arrived.
Among them was a young recruit— no more than twenty-two or
twenty-three — who went up to all of us standing on the sidewalk and
began stepping heavily on one foot after another. When he got to me,
I pulled my foot back. It was no time for a fight. After he passed, I
ignored him and tried to get John Sloane to calm down and sign the
ticket. Sloane finally came around and was about to sign when the
recruit stepped on the feet of a brother, who promptly helped him off
in a vigorous fashion. That was all the police needed. They charged
the brother and began to beat him with their clubs. I ran up to them,
saying, "This isn't necessary! It's not necessary!" None of us were
armed, or the situation would have been different. But, cowardly as
ever, they were unrestrainedly attacking an unarmed man, overpower-
ing him.
When I saw how brutally they were beating the brother, I went
over to one of the policemen and put my hand on his arm to restrain
him. This man was big and powerfully built. He spun around and
charged me, backing me against the car in a choke hold so tight I
could not move. The other brothers ran to my assistance. The police-
man had reached for his gun because he was afraid the people would
storm him, but I told them not to do anything, and I took the arrest,
along with John Sloane and the brother who had shoved the policeman
off his foot.
All the way to the station Sloane and the other brother angrily
cursed the policeman. I tried to calm them down; we were handcuffed
and there was no point in further struggle. But they kept right on
protesting and cursing, and when we got to the station, the police
153
Revolutionary Suicide
began working them over. Their arms were still restrained. Since I
said nothing, I got oft lightly. The police provoked me, but I refused
to respond. I just kept telling the other guys to shut up, but they would
not, and so they got a real beating. The big guy who had charged me
was right in the middle of it, giving as many blows as he could, really
enjoying his work. After the brothers were subdued, he mopped his
brow, straightened out his clothes, and told the others, "I have to go
now because I promised to take mv wife and the kids to church at
nine."
When we began to receive requests for assistance in starting new
branches of the Party, we realized our need for more than courageous
troops. We lacked an administrative body that could handle these re-
quests and supervise a large-scale organization. The brothers on the
block had none of the bourgeois skills needed for this. Yet these skills
were necessary, even though we did not want bourgeois values, so we
looked for ways to solve our administrative problems while continuing
our work with the street brothers.
I had to respect the Student Nonviolent Co-ordinating Committee
(SN'CC) for having some of the most disciplined organizers in the
country. When wo had first talked of forming a party, Bobby and I
lead about their work in the South — registering people to vote and
organizing co-operatives and the like. We felt they could do a good
job of administering the Party because they were all committed people
and highly skilled. Their leadership came from college campuses.
Our original plan was to draft Stokely Carmichael of SNCC into the
Party and make him Prime Minister, then to add all the SNCC leader-
ship to the Party's administrative positions, including H. Rap Brown
and James Forman. By doing this, we hoped to create a merger, not a
coalition, since it seemed to us that only by merging could we produce
the strong leadership we needed.
The movement was cresting around the country. Brothers on the
block in many northern cities were moving angrily in response to the
problems that overwhelmed them. New York and other eastern cities
had exploded in 1964, Watts went up in 1965, Cleveland in 1966, and
in 1967 another long hot summer was approaching. But the brothers
needed direction for their energies. The Party wanted no more spon-
taneous riots, because the outcome was always the same: the people
154
Growing Pains
might liberate their territories tor a few short days or hours, but even-
tually the military force of the oppressor would wipe out their gains.
Having neither the strength nor the organization, the people were
powerless. In the final analysis, riots caused only more repression and
the loss of brave men. Blacks bled and died in the riots and went to jail
on petty or false charges. If the brothers could be organized into dis-
ciplined cadres, working in broadly based community programs, then
the energy expended in riots could be directed toward permanent and
positive changes.
The matter was urgent. Police were being strengthened nationwide
and given more power. In order to deal with this, we had to organize
our resources and develop an administrative body. On the other hand,
although SNCC had skills, we felt they were headed for a decline, be-
cause the thrust of the movement was diminishing in the South and
moving into the cities of the North and West, At this point in time, it
seemed clear to us that SNCC and the Black Panther Part}' needed
each other, and Black people needed us both.
By making Stokely Prime Minister — head of the Party — we were
in effect voting to give leadership of the Party to SNCC. We even
considered moving our headquarters to Atlanta, where we would be
under SNCC, in their buildings, with access to their duplicating equip-
ment and other sorely needed materials. Our long-range plan was to
organize the communities of the North, especially the brothers on the
block, using SNCC's administrative talent to co-ordinate the activities.
Combining their work in the South and ours in the North would give
the forces of Black liberation a powerful striking force.
We drew up our plans, drafting Stokely Carmichael as Prime Min-
ister, H. Rap Brown as Minister of Justice, and James Forman as
Minister of Foreign Affairs. Our own position was clear; we would
accept whatever places in the administration they had for us; we were
not hung up on status. Eldridge, Bobby, and I were in full agreement
about this. A party as such did not interest me. I was more concerned
about the revolution and the freedom of Black people, and getting the
best personnel in positions of authority to bring these goals about.
From the beginning, Black Panther leadership had been a casual thing,
designed only to give our ideas a form and a structure.
Eldridge got in touch with Stokely about the merger. Thev had met
early in 1967 when Eldridge traveled with Stokely on an assignment
155
lUwolutinnarij Suicide
lor H,nni„irl.i. We had met other SNCC people then, too, so Eldridge
handled (oiiiinniiications. We also got in touch with Rap Brown and
[allies Kornr.m, who both seemed to go along with the plan. Thev in
nun were supposed to inform the rest of the governing bodv of SNCC,
■ uid we thought this had been done when Brown and Forman indicated
dial SNCC approved of the merger. But the scheme never worked out
as we had hoped.
We later found out that it had all been empty talk on their part.
According to others on the governing body of SNCC, the matter was
never brought up formally, despite assurances to us by Brown and
Forman. Nor was the entire membership notified of any plans for a
merger. So when we announced the merger— that we were delivering
the Black Panthers to them— some of the SNCC people reacted in a
paranoid way, they thought we were trying to co-opt them. As a result,
some SNCC members— Julius Lester and others— wrote articles criti-
cizing us, saying that we had not approached the right people in at-
tempting to accomplish the merger. We took offense at this. We had
gone through the people we knew and those who spoke publicly for
SNCC since we thought the organization was behind them. But ap-
parently it was not.
I think the main problem was a basic lack of trust. If we supported
each other and were honest. I felt sure that a certain level of trust
would be reached. This is very crucial in any good relationship, more
crucial perhaps in this case, since the merger was susceptible to mis-
representation and misunderstanding. But there was no real trust, be-
cause SNCC's people believed we wanted to take over their organiza-
tion, whereas the reverse was true: we intended to give them complete
control. They just did not see it that way. Later, when I was in jail, I
was told that they had totally rejected any plans for a merger because
I never answered a letter they wrote me. I was in solitary confinement
all this time and did not receive the letter from SNCC. But they held
me responsible nonetheless.
It worked out for the best in the end, however, because when SNCC
took their turn in the wrong direction we were not dragged along. They
had talked socialism for a while, but then they backtracked and started
to advocate a separate nation and to ignore the world class problem.
Any relationship with Stokely would have been problematical, We re-
alized this when we first got in touch with African guerrilla groups and
156
Growing Pains
other freedom fighters. They said they had had confidence in Stokely
at first, believing him to be a revolutionary. But when he aligned him-
self w^ith reactionary African governments, he lost his credibility. He
had come into their countries, barely acknowledging them, talking
about the new alliance he was forming with Nkrumah, and making
himself the spokesman for African freedom fighters. Then the revolu-
tionaries found out that Nkrumah did not really support Stokely's posi-
tion on race.
I first met Stokely in May, 1967, when he came to speak in the Bay
Area. We met once at Eldridge's house, and another time at Beverly
Axelrod's. Several times we drove to San Mateo together to meet with
small community groups. Stokely wrote in a recent book that when he
visited the Bay Area, Bobby and I had asked his permission to start an
organization and call it the Black Panther Party. This is untrue. Bobby
and I together had chosen the Party's name, taking it from the symbol
of the black panther used by the Lowndes County Freedom Organiza-
tion, which Stokely had helped found in Mississippi. We never asked
Stokely's advice about starting the Party; we were organized before we
met him.
Anyway, we broke with SNCC, not really wanting to, but realizing
we could accomplish little without their trust. Later I was glad of the
break, because Stokely's views are so inconsistent you never know
where he is coming from. When a man is consistent, you at least know
what is happening and what to expect. Stokely says one thing one day
and another the next. He accuses us of misleading people by our coali-
tions with whites, but I say he confuses people when he goes to Wash-
ington and tries to prevent a Black policeman from being kicked off
the force — a policeman who takes orders to kill his own people and
who protects the Establishment. Stokely told me he would support
anyone — he did not care who — if the person were Black. We consider
this viewpoint both racist and suicidal. If you support a Black man
with a gun who belongs to the military arm of your oppressor, then
you are assisting in your own destruction.
Our plans for a merger with SNCC probably would not have come
in time to prevent the summer riots of 1967. In July and August, when
the Black communities of Newark and Detroit erupted in rage and
frustration, our worst expectations came true. In each instance trouble
had begun when the police had brutalized a brother or sister. In a
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Rcvohittonan/ Suicide
linger sense, the younger Blacks particularly were expressing their
Irmtrution. The consequences of these bitter uprisings would surely
lm nunc right-wing political reaction and a move to conservative poli-
tirs ihrnughout the nation. The eruption in Watts had come in 1965,
and Uonakl Reagan was elected governor in 1966. Now, with the cities
rocked by riots again in 1967, the ruling circles would undoubtedly
respond with more repressive controls. The California story would be
repeated in other states and then on a national level.
All that summer we sought to prevent this chain of events. We
organized, recruited, and worked hard at putting out our paper. We
tried especially to be aware always of what was happening on the
streets of the inner cities so that we could ride the crest of the move-
ment by directing the people's energies in constructive ways. We par-
ticularly wanted people to understand their constitutional rights, rights
that were constantly violated by police and authorities. With only an
elementary knowledge of these rights, many of their problems could
be avoided in tense situations.
To impart that knowledge we began a series of pieces in the earliest
issues of our newspapers called "Pocket Lawyer of Legal First Aid."
Using lawbooks and various legal pamphlets, I put together in simple
form a number of rules for people to follow.
POCKET LAWYER OF LEGAL FIRST AID
This pocket lawyer is provided as a means of keeping Black people up
to date on their rights. We are always the first to be arrested and the racist
police forces are constantly trying to pretend that rights are extended equally
to all people. Cut this out, brothers and sisters, and carry it with you. Until
we arm ourselves to righteously take care of our own, the pocket lawyer is
what's happening.
1. If you are stopped and/or arrested by the police, you may remain
silent; you do not have to answer any questions about alleged crimes; you
should provide your name and address only if requested (although it is not
absolutely clear that you must do so.) But then do so, and at all times re-
member the Fifth Amendment.
2. If a police officer is not in uniform, ask him to show his identification.
He has no authority over you unless he properly identifies himself. Beware of
persons posing as police officers. Always get his badge number and his name.
3. Police have no right to search your car or your home unless they have
a search warrant, probable cause or your consent. They may conduct no ex-
ploratory search, that is, one for evidence of crime generally or for evidence
158
Growing Pains
of a crime unconnected with the one you are being questioned about. (Thus,
a stop for an auto violation does not give the right to search the auto.) You
are not required to consent to a search; therefore, you should not consent
and should state clearly and unequivocally that you do not consent, in front
of witnesses if possible. If you do not consent, the police will have the bur-
den in court of showing probable cause. Arrest may be corrected later.
4. You may not resist arrest forcibly or by going limp, even if you are
innocent. To do so is a separate crime of which you can be convicted even
if you are acquitted of the original charge. Do not resist arrest under any
circumstances.
5. If you are stopped and/or arrested, the police may search you by
patting you on the outside of your clothing. You can be stripped of your per-
sonal possessions. Do not carry anything that includes the name of your em-
ployer or friends,
6. Do not engage in "friendly" conversation with officers on the way to
or at the station. Once you are arrested, there is little likelihood that any-
thing you say will get you released.
7. As soon as you have been booked, you have the right to complete at
least two phone calls— one to a relative, friend or attorney, the other to a
bail bondsman. If you can, call the Black Panther Party, 845-0103 (845-
0104) , and the Party will post bail if possible.
8. You must be allowed to hire and see an attorney immediately.
9. You do not have to give any statement to the police, nor do you have
to sign any statement you might give them, and therefore you should not
sign anything. Take the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, because you
cannot be forced to testify against yourself.
10. You must be allowed to post bail in most cases, but you must be able
to pay the bail bondsmen's fee. If you cannot pay the fee, you may ask the
judge to release you from custody without bail or to lower your bail, but he
does not have to do so.
11. The police must bring you into court or release you within 48 hours
after your arrest (unless the time ends on a week-end or a holiday, and they
must bring you before a judge the first day court is in session.)
12. If you do not have the money to hire an attorney, immediately ask
the police to get you an attorney without charge.
13. If you have the money to hire a private attorney, but do not know of
one, call the National Lawyers' Guild or the Alameda County Bar Associa-
tion (or the Bar Association of your county) and ask them to furnish you
with the name of an attorney who practices criminal law.
Carrying our message as it did right into the homes of the people,
the paper was a source of great satisfaction and pleasure to us. It ex-
159
Revolutionary Suicide
plained events from a community point of view. For instance, in The
Murk Pttnther the people read the true explanation of why we went
In Sacramento and what happened there. We reported on events and
dings in Black communities all over the Bay Area. Until that time
the Black Panther Party had been maligned by the Establishment press,
which was interested only in the kind of sensationalism that sells
papers. But once we began to give our own interpretation of events,
Black people realized how facts had been twisted by the mass media.
They were glad to get our point of view, and the paper sold well. It
became a steady source of funds to help us continue developing our
programs.
I was satisfied with our movement in 1967. Our newspaper was
reaching the people; the Sacramento stance had received tremendous
support; new chapters were springing up in many cities; we were ex-
ploring new ways to raise the consciousness of Black people. Every-
thing was working well.
My only sadness was that Bobby Seale was going away to jail for
six months in August as a result of the Sacramento confrontation. We
had made a deal with the courts in Sacramento: Bobby would do six
months for a misdemeanor in exchange for the charges being dropped
against the others. Six months was not long in the life of our struggle,
but Bobby was a good organizer, a man who got things moving. He
would be missed. Still, we expressed no sorrow when Bobby was taken
away from us. This was a small price to pay for the liberation of the
people. Also, it was only a question of time before they would be after
me, and then Eldridge. When Bobby left in August, 1967, we were not
to be together on the streets again until June, 1971.
160
Part Four
Black men and women who refuse to live under oppres-
sion are dangerous to white society because they be-
come symbols of hope to their brothers and sisters, in-
spiring them to follow their example.
1
The mobilization of the masses, when it arises out of the
war of liberation, introduces into each man's consciousness
the ideas of a common cause, of a national destiny, and of
a collective history. In the same way the second phase, that
of the building-up of the nation, is helped on by the exist-
ence of this cement which has been mixed with blood and
anger.
frantz fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
Nommo: Swahili for "the power of the word"
Raising Consciousness
The Black Panthers have always emphasized action over rheto-
ric. But language, the power of the word, in the philosophical sense,
is not underestimated in our ideology. We recognize the significance of
words in the struggle for liberation, not only in the media and in con-
versations with people on the block, but in the important area of rais-
ing consciousness. Words are another way of defining phenomena, and
the definition of any phenomenon is the first step to controlling it or
being controlled by it.
When I read Nietzsche s The Will to Power, I learned much from
a number of his philosophical insights. This is not to say that I endorse
all of Nietzsche, only that many of his ideas have influenced my think-
ing. Because Nietzsche was writing about concepts fundamental to all
men, and particularly about the meaning of power, some of his ideas
are pertinent to the way Black people live in the United States; they
have had a great impact on the development of the Black Panther
philosophy.
163
Revolutionary Suicide
Nietzsche believed that beyond good and evil is the will to power,
In other words, good and evil are labels for phenomena, or value judg-
ments. Behind these value judgments is the will to power, which causes
man to view phenomena as good or evil. It is really the will to power
that controls our understanding of something and not an inherent
quality of good or evil,
Man attempts to define phenomena in such a way that they reflect
the interests of his own class or group. He gives titles or values to
phenomena according to what he sees as beneficial; if it is to his ad-
vantage, something is called good, and if it is not beneficial, then it is
defined as evil. Nietzsche shows how this reasoning was used by the
Orman ruling circle, which always defined phenomena in terms com-
plimentary to the noble class. For example, they used the German
word gut. which means "godlike" or "good," to refer to themselves;
nobles were- gut. On the other hand, the word villein, used to describe
1 he poor people and serfs who lived outside the great gates of the noble-
man's home, suggested the opposite. The poor were said to live in the
"village," a word that comes from the same root word (Latin: villa)
as the term "villain." So the ruling class, by the power they possessed,
defined themselves as "godlike" and called the people "villains" or
enemies of the ruling circle. Needless to say, when the poor and com-
mon people internalized these ideas, they felt inferior, guilty, and
ashamed, while the nobles took their superiority for granted. Thought
had been shaped by language.
We have seen the same thing in the United States, where, over a
period of time, the adjective "black" became a potent word in the
American language, pejorative in every sense. We were made to feel
ashamed and guilt}' because of our biological characteristics, while our
oppressors, through their whiteness, felt noble and uplifted. In the past
few years, however — and it has been only a few years — the rising level
of consciousness within our Black communities has led us to redefine
ourselves. People once ashamed to be called Black now gladly accept
the label, and our biological characteristics are sources of pride. Today
we call ourselves Black people and wear natural hair styles because we
have changed the definition of the word "black." This is an example
of Nietzsche's theory that beyond good and evil is the will to power.
In the early days of the Black Panthers we tried to find ways to
make this theory work in the best interests of Black people. Words
164
Raising Consciousness
could be used not only to make Blacks more proud but to make whites
question and even reject concepts they had always unthinkingly ac-
cepted. One of our prime needs was a new definition for "policeman." A
good descriptive word, one the community' would accept and use,
would not only advance Black consciousness, but in effect control the
police by making them see themselves in a new light.
We thought up new terms for them. At first I figured that the re-
verse of god — dog — would be a good epithet, but it did not catch on.
We tried beast, brute, and animal, but none of them captured the es-
sential quality we were trying to convey. One day, while working on
the paper, Eldridge showed us a postcard from Beverly Axelrod. On
the front was the slogan "Support Your Local Police"; there was a
sheriffs star above the phrase, and in the center of the star a grinning,
slobbering pig. It was just what we were looking for. We began to
show policemen as pigs in our cartoons, and from time to time used
the word. "Pig" caught on; it entered the language.
This was a form of psychological warfare: it raised the conscious-
ness of the people and also inflicted a new consciousness on the ruling
circle. If whites and police became caught up in this new awareness,
they would soon defect from their own ranks and join us to avoid feel-
ings of guilt and shame.
Nietzsche pointed out that this tactic had been used to good effect
by the Christians against the Romans. In the beginning the Christians
were weak, but they understood how to make the philosophy of a
weak group work for them. By using phrases like "the meek shall in-
herit the earth," they imposed a new idea on the Romans, one that gave
rise to doubt and led to defections to the new sect. Once Christians
stated that the meek shall inherit the earth and won over members,
they weakened the strength of those in power. They were to be the
victors. People like to be on the winning side. We have seen the same
principle work on college campuses in this country. Many white youths
now identify with Blacks; the identification is manifested in clothes,
rhetoric, and life styles.
Thus, even though we came to the term "pig" accidentally, the
choice itself was calculated. "Pig" was perfect for several reasons. First
of all, words like "swine," "hog," "sow," and "pig" have always had
unpleasant connotations. The reason for this probably has theological
roots, since the pig is considered an unclean animal in Semitic religions.
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Revolutionary Suicide
In the English language well-established "pig" epithets are numerous.
We say that someone eats like a hog, is a filthy swine, and so on. In
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce uses swine as a
destructive, devouring image when he describes Ireland as "an old sow
that eats her farrow." So the word "pig" is traditionally associated with
grotesque qualities,
The pig in reality is an ugly and offensive animal. It likes to root
around in the mud; it makes hideous noises; it does not seem to relate
to humans as other animals do. Further, anyone in the Black com-
munity can relate to the true characteristics of the pig because most of
us come from rural backgrounds and have observed the nature of pigs.
Many of the police, too, are hired right out of the South and are familiar
with the behavior of pigs. They know exactly what the word implies.
To call a policeman a pig conveys the idea of someone who is brutal,
gross, and uncaring.
"Pig" has another point in its favor: in racial terms "pig" is a neutral
word. Many white youths on college campuses began to understand
what the police were really like when their heads were broken open
during demonstrations against the draft and the Vietnam war. This
broadened the use of the term and served to unify the victims against
their oppressors. Even though white youths were not victimized in the
same way or to the same extent that we were, they nonetheless became
our allies against the police. In this case the ruling circle was not able
to set the victims against each other, as the racists in the South had
done by setting poor whites against Blacks.
Our greatest victory, however, lay in the effect on the police them-
selves. They did not like to be called pigs, and they still do not. Ever
since the term came into use, they have conducted a countereampaign
by using slogans like "Pigs Are Beautiful" and wearing pig pins; but
their effort has failed. Our message, of course, is that if they do not
want to be pigs, then they ought to stop their brutalization of the vic-
tims of the world. No slogan will change the people's opinion; a change
in behavior is the only thing that will do it
Another expression that helped to raise Black people's conscious-
ness is "All Power to the People." An expression that has meaning on
several levels— political, economic, and metaphysical— it was coined
by the Black Panther Party around the same time'as "pig," and has also
gained wide acceptance. When we created it, I had in mind some
166
Raising Consciousness
distinct philosophical goals for the community that many people did
not understand. The police and the press wanted everyone to believe
that we were nothing more than a bunch of "young toughs" strutting
around with guns in order to shock people. But Bobby and I always
had a clear understanding of what we wanted to do. We wanted to
give the community a wide variety of needed programs, and so we
began in a way that would gain the community's support. At the same
time we saw the necessity of going beyond these first steps. In develop-
ing our newspaper, we were working toward our long-range goals of or-
ganizing the community around programs that the people would come
to believe in strongly. We hoped these programs would come to mean
so much that the people would take up guns for defense against any
maneuvers by the oppressor,
All these programs were aimed at one goal: complete control of the
institutions in the community. Every ethnic group has particular needs
that they know and understand better than anybody else; each group
is the best judge of how its institutions ought to affect the lives of its
members. Throughout American history ethnic groups like the Irish
and Italians have established organizations and institutions within
their own communities. When they achieved this political control, they
had the power to deal with their problems, Yet there is still another
necessary step. In the Black community, mere control of our own in-
stitutions will not automatically solve problems. For one thing, it is
difficult to get enough places of work in the community to produce
full employment for Blacks. The most important element in controlling
our own institutions would be to organize them into co-operatives,
which would end all forms of exploitation. Then the profits, or surplus,
from the co-operatives would be returned to the community, expanding
opportunities on all levels, and enriching life. Beyond this, our ultimate
aim is to have various ethnic communities co-operating in a spirit of
mutual aid, rather than competing. In this way, all communities would
be allied in a common purpose through the major social, economic, and
political institutions in the country.
This is our long-range objective. Although we are far from realizing
it, it is important that the people understand what we want for them
and what are, indeed, their natural rights. Therefore, the slogan "All
Power to the People" sums up our goals for Black people, as well as
our deep love and commitment to them. All power comes from the peo-
167
HvvriluliaiiiJni Suicitlc
j >!■-. ami all |murr iimsl ultimately be vested in them. Anything else is
tlx'tl.
Our complete faith in the people is based on our assumptions about
what (hey require and deserve. The first of these is honesty. When it
became apparent in the early days that the Black Panthers were a
growing force, some people urged us to take either accommodating
positions for small gains or a "Black line" based solely on race rather
than economic or social strategy. These people were talking a Black
game they did not really believe in. But they saw that the people be-
lieved and that the Black line could be used to mobilize them. We
resisted. To us, it was both wrong and futile to deceive the people;
eventually we would have to answer to them.
In the metaphysical sense we based the expression "All Power to the
People" on the idea of man as God. I have no other God but man, and
I firmly believe that man is the highest or chief good. If you are obli-
gated to be true and honest to anyone, it is to your God, and if each
man is God, then you must be true to him. If you believe that man is
die ultimate being, then you will act according to your belief. Your
attitude and behavior toward man is a kind of religion in itself, with
high standards of responsibility.
It was especially important to me that I explore the Judaeo-Christian
concept of God, because historically that concept has had an enormous
impact on the lives of Black people in America. Their acceptance of
the Judaeo-Christian God and religion has always meant submission
and an emphasis on the rewards of the life hereafter as relief for the
sufferings of the present. Christianity began as a religion for the outcast
and oppressed. While the early Christians succeeded in undermining the
authority and confidence of their rulers and rising up out of slavery, the
Afro-American experience has been just the opposite. Already a people
in slavery, when Christianity was imposed upon them, the Blacks only
assumed another burden, the tyranny of the future— the hope of
heaven and the fear of hell. Christianity increased their sense of hope-
lessness. It also projected the idea of salvation and happiness into the
afterlife, where God would reward them for all their sufferings on this
earth. Justice would come later, in the Promised Land.
The phrase "All Power to the People" was meant to turn this
around, to convince Black people that their rewards were due in the
present, that it was in their power to create a Promised Land here and
168
Raising Consciousness
now. The Black Panthers have never intended to turn Black people
away from religion. We want to encourage them to change their con-
sciousness of themselves and to be less accepting of the white man's
version of God— the God of the downtrodden, the weak, and the unde-
serving. We want them to see themselves as the called, the chosen, and
the salt of the earth.
Even before we coined the phrase, I had long thought about the
idea of God. I could not accept the Biblical version; the Bible is too
full of contradictions and irrationality. Either you accept it, and be-
lieve, or you do not. I could not believe. I have arrived at my under-
standing of what is meant by God through other means — through phi-
losophy, logic, and semantics. My opinion is that the term "God" be-
longs to the realm of concepts, that it is dependent upon man for its
existence. If God does not exist unless man exists, then man must be
here to produce God. It logically follows, then, that man created God,
and if the creator is greater than that which is created, then we must
hold that man is the highest good.
I can understand why man feels the need to create God, particu-
larly in earlier periods of history when scientific understanding was
limited. The phenomena that man observed around him in the universe
sometimes overwhelmed him; he could not explain or account for
them. Therefore, he created something in his mind that was "greater"
than these phenomena, something that was responsible for the mys-
teries in nature. But I think that when man clings to the idea of a God,
whom he has created and placed in the heavens, he actually reduces
himself and his own potential. The more he attributes to God, the more
inferior he becomes, the less responsible for his own destiny. He says
to God, "I am weak but thou art mighty," and therefore accepts things
as they are, content to leave the running of the world to a supernatural
force greater than himself. This attitude embodies a kind of fatalism,
which is inimical to growth and change. On the other hand, the greater
man becomes, the less his God will be.
None of this means that I am completely hostile to the many beau-
tiful and admirable things about religion, When I speak of certain
aspects of society to Black people, the use of religious phraseology
flows naturally, and the audience response is genuine. I also read the
Bible frequently, not only for its poetry, but also for its wisdom and
insight. Still, much of the Bible is madness. I cannot accept, for ex-
169
Ht'vohitionrm/ Suicide
ample, flic notion of divine law and responsibility to "God." As far as
I .nil nmeemed, if men are responsible beings, they ought to be respon-
sible to each oilier. And so, when we say "All Power to the People,"
we mean to convey a sense of deep respect and love for the people,
and the idea that the people deserve complete truth and honesty. The
judgment of history is the judgment of the people. That is the motivat-
ing and controlling idea of our very existence.
170
23
The staggering force of brutish might
That strikes and leaves us stunned and dazed;
The long, vain waiting through the night
To hear some voice for justice raised.
j ames weldon johnson, "Fifty Years"
Crisis: October 28, 1967
When I was convicted of assaulting Odell Lee in 1964, the
court sentenced me to three years' probation under condition that I
first serve six months in the county jail. After release I reported regu-
larly to my probation officer, all through the months that we founded
the Black Panther Party and began our work in the community. The
probation officer was better than average, really a pretty nice guy,
intelligent and fair, and we got along well. Nonetheless, I was relieved
when he told me early in October, 1967, that my probation would end
on October 27 and parole begin. One of the requirements of parole
was that I avoid some parts of Berkeley; in any case, no more report-
ing; October 27 was going to be a very special day, and my girl friend,
La Verne Williams, and I agreed that we would celebrate the occasion.
On the afternoon of October 27, I was scheduled to speak at a
forum on "The Future of the Black Liberation Movement," sponsored
by the Black Students Union of San Francisco State College. Requests
for speaking engagements had been coming in frequently since the
end of the summer. The Sacramento publicity prompted a number of
college groups to ask for an explanation of our approach to the prob-
lems of Blacks. They were also interested in hearing why we opposed
spontaneous rebellions in Black communities and how we viewed the
171
Revolutionary Suicide
recent riots in Newark and Detroit. Bobby was in jail, and I was filling
as many of these requests as possible, even though I am not very good
at talking to large groups; nor do I enjoy it. Abstract and theoretical
ideas interest me most, but the)' lack the rhetorical fire to hold audi-
ences. I went to San Francisco State, anyway, because I was eager to
increase our contacts with Black college students. Sharing the platform
with me that afternoon was Dr. Harry Edwards, the sociology professor
from San Jose State College, who was organizing the Olympic boycott
by Black athletes.
That session was particularly challenging because it offered the op-
porduiitv for a lively discussion with people who disagreed with my
ideas, (This was in 1967, just after one of the longest, hottest summers
in American history. Student consciousness had never been higher.) I
I. ilkcd about the necessity for Black people to gain control of the institu-
tions in their own communities, eventually transforming them into co-
operatives, and of one da}' working with other ethnic groups to change
the .system. When I had finished speaking, an informal dialogue began;
almost all the students' questions and criticisms were directed at the
Mark Panthers' willingness to work in coalition with white groups.
We maintained this was possible as long as we controlled the programs,
but the students were opposed to working with white groups, or, for
I hat matter, almost anyone but Blacks. While this viewpoint was under-
standable to me, it failed to take into consideration the limitations of
our power. We needed allies, and we believed that alliances with young
whites — students and workers — were worth the risk.
I pointed out that many young whites had suddenly discovered
hypocrisy; their fathers and forefathers had written and talked brother-
hood and democracy while practicing greed, imperialism, and racism.
While speaking of the rights of mankind and equality for all, of "free
enterprise," the "profit system," "individualism," and "healthy com-
petition," they had plundered the wealth of the world and enslaved
Blacks in the United States. White youths now saw through this hypoc-
risy and were trying to bring about changes through traditional electoral
politics. But reality is impervious to idealism. These youngsters were
discovering what Blacks knew in their bones— that the militarv-indus-
trial complex was practically invincible and had in fact created a police
state, which rendered idealism powerless to change anything. This led
to disillusionment with their parents and the American power struc-
Crisis: October 28, 1967
ture. At that point of disillusionment they began to identify with the
oppressed people of the world.
When the Black Panthers saw this trend developing, we under-
stood that their dissatisfaction could help our cause. In a few years'
time, almost half of the American population would be composed of
young people; if we developed strong and meaningful alliances with
white youth, they would support our goals and work against the Estab-
lishment.
Everywhere I went in 1967 I was vehemently attacked by Black
students for this position; few could present opposing objective evidence
to support their criticisms. The reaction was emotional: all white people
were devils; they wanted nothing to do with them. I agreed that some
white people could act like devils, but we could not blind ourselves to
a common humanity. More important was how to control the situation
to our advantage. These questions would not be answered overnight,
or in a decade, and time and again the students and I went for hours,
getting nowhere. We talked right past each other, The racism that
dominated their lives had come between us, and rational analysis was
the victim. When I left San Francisco that afternoon, I reflected that
many of the students who were supposedly learning how to analyze
and understand phenomena were in fact caught up in the same predica-
ment as the prisoners in Plato's cave allegory. Even though they were
in college, they were still prisoners in the cave of exploitation and
racism that Black people have been subjected to for centuries. Far
from preparing them to deal with reality, college kept their intellects
in chains. That afternoon I felt even more strongly that the Party would
have to develop a program to implement Point 5 of our program, a true
education for our people.
When I returned home around 6:30, I had a happy, righteous dinner
of mustard greens and corn bread with my family. We discussed the
college students and their attitudes and how difficult it had been to
get through to them. That was our last meal together as a family for
thirty-three months. But I had no premonition of this when I left the
house and set out on foot for LaVerne's. The friends with me at San
Francisco State had taken the car after driving me home, On the way, I
planned our evening together, and thought about some of the things I
might do now that I no longer had to report to my probation officer.
At LaVerne's house, I found to my disappointment that she was ill and
173
Revolutionary Suicide
did not fuel like going out. Although I wanted to stay with her, she
insisted that I take her car and celebrate. She knew how much it meant
to me that probation was over. By this time it was getting late, close
(o ten, so I decided to visit a few of my favorite places.
Nothing about my movements that evening was out of the ordinary.
I went first to the Bosn's Locker, the bar where I had started recruiting.
Most of the people there were close or casual friends, and I talked, dis-
cussing my new freedom and celebrating with a liberation drink, Cuba
libre, a rum and Coke. From there I went to a nearby church where
a social was in full swing. Every Wednesday night this church held
an Afro-history class, and on Friday nights a well-attended social with
dancing and punch. I had one more place to go — a party being given
by friends on San Pablo Street in Oakland. About 2:00 a.m., when the
social was ending, I set out for the party with Gene McKinney, a friend
I had known since grammar school. By now it was October 28; I was
officially a free man, and feeling great. Even though the food was gone
by the time we got to San Pablo Street, I did not mind. It was good to
mingle with the people and talk about the Black Panthers and answer
their questions. We stayed until the very end, 4:00 a.m.
Then Gene McKinney and I headed for Seventh Street, the center
of the action for West Oakland. There are a number of bars and soul-
tood restaurants on the street, a few nightclubs, and at almost any hour
vou can find something going on. Some of the restaurants serve up
barbecue that is really saying something. Gene and I were hungry,
and Seventh Street is the place to get righteous soul food.
As I turned into Seventh Street, looking for a parking place, I saw
the red light of a police car in my rear-view mirror. I had not realized
that I was being trailed by a policeman, and my initial reaction was
here we go again, more harassment. But, having been stopped so many
times before, I was ready. The police had a list of the licenses on cars
Black Panthers frequently used, so we always expected this. I kept my
lawbook between the bucket seats, and I knew that once I began to
read the law to the "law enforcer" he would have to let me go. I
wondered what his excuse would be this time; I had obeyed all the
traffic regulations.
I pulled the car over to the curb, and the police officer stopped be-
hind me, remaining in his car for a minute or so. Then he got out and
came up to my window. When he got a good look at me, he stuck his
274
Crisis: October 28, 1967
head in the window within six inches of my face and said very sat
castically, "Well, well, well, what do we have here? The L>,n\it, r>m;f
Huey P. Newton." I made no reply but merely looked him in the eve. I It-
acted like a fisherman who had just landed a prize catch he dad nrvn
dreamed of landing. Then he asked for my driver's license, which i invi-
to him. "Who does the car belong to?" he asked. I told him, "It belongs
to Miss La Verne Williams," and showed him the registration. Allei
comparing it with the license, he gave me the license back and Wen! to
his car with the registration. While I sat in the car waiting for him to
finish, another police officer pulled up behind the first one. This was
not unusual, and I attached little significance to it. The second officer
walked up to the first officer's car, and they talked for a moment. Then
the second officer came to my window and said, "Mr. Williams, do you
have any further identification?" I said, "What do you mean 'Mr. Wil-
liams'? My name is Huey P. Newton, and I have already shown my
driver's license to the first officer." He just looked at me, nodding his
head, and said, "Yes, I know who you are." I knew they both recognized
me, because my picture and name were known to every officer in Oak-
land, as were Bobby's and most of the other Black Panthers'.
The first officer then came back to my car, opened the door, and
ordered me out, while the second officer walked around to the passenger
side and told Gene McKinney to get out. He then walked Gene to the
street side of the car. Meanwhile, I picked up my lawbook from be-
tween the seats and started to get out. I thought it was my criminal
evidence book, which covers laws dealing with reasonable cause for
arrest and the search and seizure laws. If necessary, I intended to read
the law to this policeman, as I had done so many times in the past.
However, I had mistakenly picked up my criminal lawbook, which looks
exactly like the other one.
I got out of the car with the book in my right hand and asked the
officer if I was under arrest. He said, "No, you're not under arrest; just
lean on the car." I leaned on the top of the car— a Volkswagen — with
both hands on the lawbook while the officer searched me. He did it in a
manner intended to be degrading, pulling out my shirttail, running his
hand over my body, and then he pat-searched my legs, bringing his
hands up into my genital area. He was both disgusting and thorough.
All this time the four of us were in the street, the second officer with
Gene McKinney; I could not see what they were doing.
275
Revolutionary Suicide
The officer then told me to go back to his car because he wanted to
talk to me. Taking my left arm in his right hand, he began walking, or
rather pushing me toward his car. But when we reached it, he kept
going until we had reached the back door of the second police car,
where he brought me to an abrupt halt. At this, I opened my lawbook
and said, "You have no reasonable cause to arrest me." The officer was
to my left, just slightly behind me. As I was opening the book, he
snarled, "You can take that book and shove it up your ass, nigger."
With that, he stepped slightly in front of me and brought his left hand
up into my face, hooking me with a smear that was not a direct blow,
but more like a solid straight-arm. This momentarily dazed me, and I
stumbled back four or five feet and went down on one knee, still hold-
ing on to my book. As I started to rise, I saw the officer draw his service
revolver, point it at me, and fire. My stomach seemed to explode, as if
someone had poured a pot of boiling soup all over me, and the world
went hazy.
There were some shots, a rapid volley, but I have no idea where they
eumi' J mm. They seemed to be all around me. I vaguely remember be-
ing an my hands and knees on the ground, disoriented, with everything
spinning. I also had the sensation of being moved or propelled. After
Hi, it, I remember nothing.
176
24
Black brother, think you life so sweet
That you would live at any price?
Does mere existence balance with
The weight of your great sacrifice?
Or can it be you fear the grave
Enough to live and die a slave?
O Brother! be it better said.
When you are gone and tears are shed,
That your death was the stepping stone
Your children's children cross'd upon.
Men have died that men might live:
Look every foeman in the eye!
If necessary, your life give
For something, ere in vain you die.
BAY GARFIELD DA N'DRIDCE,
"Time to Die"
Aftermath
Long after I was shot I hovered between consciousness and un-
consciousness. I remember some things and have no memory of others.
It was a terrifying time; the blood was pounding in my head, waves of
pain engulfed me, and everything around me receded into a vast blur.
I lost all sense of minutes and hours, The next thing I recall is arriving
at the entrance to Kaiser Hospital, which is about five miles from the
scene of the shooting. I have no idea how I got there. I remember a
platform at the entrance about the height of my waist; it seemed to have
no steps leading up to it, and I wondered how I would get up on it.
Although I was in excruciating pain, I managed to roll onto the plat-
177
Revolutionary Suicide
form Then I rose and somehow staggered into the hospital where I
asked for a doctor. I do not remember the person I spoke to, but who-
ever it was would not call a doctor and kept mentioning the police. The
Hme seemed endless, and I grew weaker and weaker. Someone finally
helped me into a room and put me on a gurney, and a doctor came at
^^s he beoan to examine the wound in my stomach, the police burst
in Although^ was in terrific pain and completely helpless, they grabbed
mv hands and stretched them above my head, handcuffing them to the
gurney on both sides. This pulled and stretched my stomach, causing
real agony; then they began to beat on my handcuffs, already too tight
and cutting into my flesh (for more than a year after I had a pinched
nerve, where they pounded the steel into my wrists). Before long the
pain in mv arms was more intense than the pain in my stomach. It was
more than I could stand, and I screamed, begging the doctor, who was
watching this, to make the police loosen the handcuffs. He told me to
shut up." There was also a Black nurse in the room, and she became
very upset, but there was nothing she could do. The police were all
around me, hitting me in my face and head, and calling me names.
They said I had killed one policeman. John Frev, had wounded an-
other, Herbert Heanes, and that my life was no longer worth anything.
"You're going to die for this," they promised. "If you don't die in the
gas chamber, then when you're sent to prison we'll have you killed
there, and if you're acquitted we'll kill you in the streets." Some of the
police spat on me, and I spat back, getting rid of some of the mucus
and blood in my throat, Each time they came at me I spat blood in
their faces and over their uniforms. Finally, the doctor put a towel over
my mouth, and the police continued their attacks. I was still screaming
in pain when I passed out completelv.
I regained consciousness in Highland-Alameda County Hospital in
East Oakland, having been moved there because I was not a member
of the Kaiser health plan. My wound had been treated, and I was in
° This doctor, Thomas Finch, a young man of thirty-five, committed reactionary
suicide shortly after my first trial, in 1968. He had heen a witness for the prosecu-
tion at the trial, testifying about the nature of my wound and the sequence of
events at Kaiser Hospital the morning of October 28, 1967. It is generally believed
that he took his own life out of a sense of remorse and despair over his conduct in
the emergency room that morning; because he had violated all medical ethics in his
treatment of a suffering human being, his conscience would give him no peace.
178
Aftermath
bed with a penile catheter and tubes running into my nose and ab-
dominal area. Machines arranged around the bed removed the excess
fluids and mucus from the tubes. The police had awakened me. When-
ever I fell asleep, they would wake me up again.
I was so heavily drugged for the first few days it is difficult to re-
member everything that went on. When I first regained consciousness,
I seem to remember thinking about my situation and wondering if it
was hopeless. My fear was not of death itself, but a death without
meaning. I wanted my death to be something the people could relate
to, a basis for further mobilization of the community. I remember a
radio playing in the room and the announcer saying something about a
song dedicated to the Minister of Defense. However, I was not sure
I had really heard it. Perhaps it was my imagination. At that point a
nurse came into the room and, seeing I was awake, asked if I had heard
the song dedicated to me. Then I knew that my situation was not hope-
less and that the people were relating to the incident, whatever it was.
This gave me much comfort at the time, even though I was in the
hands of my oppressors. I knew that the Establishment would do every-
thing in its power to destroy me, but this small sign of community
response helped me to begin to deal with the police in my room.
During the time this was happening I kept waking up and drifting
back to sleep. I soon discovered that my feet were shackled, the chains
connecting one ankle to the other, with both fastened to the bed. It
was a strange feeling to wake up and find your feet in chains. At first I
wondered if I was having a nightmare, but then I remembered the
officer drawing his service revolver and the scene at Kaiser Hospital,
and I decided it was no dream. I really was shackled, and police were
there guarding me; they meant to kill me, as they had long wanted to
and as the officer who shot me had attempted to do. Under the circum-
stances, my survival was a miracle.
Shortly after the incident, I received a letter from a physician, Dr.
Aguilar, which was printed in The Black Panther newspaper. It read:
I can remember nothing in my medical training which suggested that, in
the care of an acute abdominal injury, severe pain and hemorrhage are best
treated by manacling the patient to the examining table in such a way that
the back is arched and belly tensed. Yet this is precisely the picture of cur-
rent emergency-room procedure which appeared on the front page of a
local newspaper last weekend. Looming large in the foreground of the same
179
Revolutionary Suicide
picture, so large as to suggest a caricature, was a police officer. Could it have
been he who distracted the doctor in charge of the case to position the pa-
tient in this curious way?
Unusual as it was, this picture probably did not disrupt very much the
pleasant weekend enjoyed by my neighbors nor disturb more than momen-
tarily the consciences of my medical colleagues. To me, upon whose mind's
eye it is permanently engraved, this photograph is a portentous document of
modern history: it represents an end and a beginning. Further, for me, there
has been enough of listening, of reading, of pondering. The time has now
come to speak, to act, to fight back.
I have read essays written by the patient, Huey P. Newton; I have heard
him patiently and painstakingly articulating his ideas and his hopes to a
parade of questioners: hour after hour he continues to address the convinced
,iik1 the unconvinced alike without malice. I have listened to him paraphras-
ing the concepts set forth in Dr. Fanon's books in a dozen brilliantly succinct
sentences. I have listened to him and marvelled that a young man of twenty-
five years can interpret in such scholarly fashion the historic, socioeconomic,
and political implications of the trend of modern society, while I, on the
other hand, after forty-five years — seventeen of them spent in study at col-
lege and in postdoctoral education — discover I learned little of human value
and must begin again.
The beginning again for me dates from the last time I saw the patient,
several weeks ago, in a discussion with a group of people, many of whom
(.'.'line by, listened awhile, and left. One such young man called later in the
evening to say that he was in jail. He had been detained by the police for
what they suspected might be a minor infraction of the Motor Vehicle Code,
mistakenly, as it turned out, for they quickly determined that no law had
been broken. Not content, the police undertook lengthy investigation which
ultimately revealed that the young man had not satisfactorily replied to a
charge of driving with an invalid license one year ago. For this reason he
was now jailed with bail set at $550. It took three hours to fill out the requi-
sition form, pay the requisite fees, and see the requisite people in order to
extricate this Black boy from his cell.
Two days later I was driving with a friend on the highway when she was
apprehended because of four concurrent infractions of the Motor Vehicle
Code, including driving without a valid permit for the trailer we were pull-
ing. Nothing happened in spite of the fact that we were detained momen-
tarily some miles farther on for still another infraction — this time a moving
violation; we still arrived home in time for dinner, two white ladies in their
comfortable white neighborhood. My friend told me later her total bail for
all of this lawlessness came to S15! So please do not waste my time, my
180
Afturmiith
white brothers and sisters, in telling me that justice is dispensed equally uu
der the law to all Americans. I will not believe you.
I apologize, Mr. Newton, for any aggravation of suffering inflicted upon
you during the course of treatment of your injuries. I apologize lor the sub
human conditions and horrors of the ghetto in which an immoral political
and social system . , . makes it inevitable that men like you are gunned
down in the streets of our town.
Mary Jane Aguilar, M.I).
All the time I was in the hospital, the police did their best to exhaust
me. Every time I dropped off they kicked the bed or shook me. One nl
them held a sawed-off shotgun up to my face, warning me that it was
going to go off accidentally. Another showed me a razor blade and
threatened to cut the tubes and let me suffocate. One of them pre-
dicted I would commit suicide by pulling the tubes out of my nose.
Sometimes they even moved the tubes. They told me I was going to
"burn." They repeated their threat that I would be gassed in the little
green chamber at San Quentin; if I escaped, they said they would have
me killed. They even took bets among themselves on whether I would
get the gas chamber or life in prison. They made remarks like "the
nigger's going to die. He's done for now; he's going to die in the gas
chamber."
I never replied, but I did complain to the nurses about the abuse.
The supervisor of nurses paid a visit, smiled at the police apologetically,
and asked them if they were bothering me. Oh, no, of course not, they
said, smiling back. When she left, the harassment started again. They
even prevented a Black nurse from treating me. White nurses came and
went at will, but when a Black nurse tried to take my blood pressure,
the police grabbed her, and she ran terrified from the room. Then the
supervisor came back. "Now, you know she works here," she said. "You
shouldn't bother her like that." This cruel game went on until my family
—who could scarcely afford it— hired private nurses to be with me all
the time. Things improved then, because the nurses watched the police
and made them leave me alone.
From the moment my family heard about the incident, they did
everything to help me. They had rushed to Kaiser Hospital and stayed
close by me while I underwent surgery. Then, at Highland Hospital,
thev hired private nurses to protect me from police abuse. My brother
Melvin and my sister Leola, with Eldridge Cleaver and other Black
181
Revolutionary Suicide
Panthers, began the arrangements for my legal defense. They knew it
was going to be difficult since the police were determined to have me
convicted and ruin the Party. To the police it was a golden opportunity;
Bobby was in jail, and they had what looked to be an open-and-shut
case against me.
The efforts of my family to get me the best legal help soon brought
encouraging results. One afternoon, after I had been in Highland Hos-
pital a few days, I heard a commotion outside my door. The police
were trving to keep out someone — a woman — who was determined to
conic in, and she was raising all kinds of hell. It was Beverly Axelrod,
llu- lawyer who had done so much to get Eldridge Cleaver out of prison,
ami willi ! ii -r was a Black attorney, Because I was still so weak Bev-
rrlv did iml- stay long that day, just long enough to assure me that
even' effort was being made to find the best lawyer to fight my case.
Beverly felt it was too big and difficult a case for her, but I sensed in
her someone who would stand by me, no matter what the cost.
Beverly has never betraved that confidence. Most of the time I have
never thought of her as a white person. Politically, she is left-wing, but
more important, she is a generous and open human being, capable of
growth and change. I have known her now for many years, and often
in the past I had discovered while talking to her that she had certain
unconscious racist ways of looking at things, Whenever this was pointed
out to her, she would examine her attitudes and deal with them in ways
that changed her life. It was this ability to change that convinced me
she was genuine and could be trusted. So when she spoke of the law-
yer Charles Garry during that first visit, I knew I could have confidence
in her opinion of him. Beverly had met Garry in the early 1950s when
she was a parole officer. She had become a protege of his; he had given
her cases and helped her to establish a law practice.
She told me that Charles Garry had a long history of defending the
politically, racially, and socially depressed. His concern for social
justice came from his father, who had fled Armenia after the 1896 mas-
sacre and settled in Bridgeport, Massachusetts. There, he had been in-
volved in the early labor movement and led a strike against a factory
paying low wages to workers. The family moved to San Francisco in
1915, and Charles put himself through law school, specializing in labor
law after graduation. In the early days of his practice, when labor
unions did not have the respectability they later enjoyed, he represented
182
Aftermath
sixteen unions. Over the years, he became more and more involved in
political cases, defending dissenters and activists in unpopular but im-
portant causes. He developed a strong sense of commitment to the un-
derprivileged and those whose rights were not fully protected. Because
the political dissenter, the accused criminal, and the early trade union
organizer were looked upon as social outcasts, Garry maintained that
they were most in need of justice and should have the best legal talent.
Garrv had a reputation as a brilliant trial lawyer, with a remarkable
gift for cross-examining witnesses, and an acute understanding of the
jurv's importance in political cases. He believed that in political trials
a defense lawyer must try to select a jury that is not so much concerned
with law and order as with basic principle— the moral principle of law.
During World War II Garry had insisted on serving as a combat in-
fantryman, although he was an obvious candidate for a commission in
the Judge Advocate's Corps. He made this choice because of his strong
opposition to fascism; he wanted to be totally involved in helping defeat
it. Charles Garry was obviously an extraordinary man,
The same day that Beverly came to see me, John George, a Black
attornev who had previously handled a number of cases for me, arrived
at the hospital. The police barred him from my room. It was typical of
their racism; a white lawyer could demand to see me and get in, but a
Black lawyer was chased away. Regardless of position or education,
color was all that mattered. Soon after, however, John did manage to
get in and brought Beverly with him. He felt, as she did, that an ex-
plosive case like mine required someone with more experience than he
had, someone with a large office staS and the necessary investigative
and research facilities.
In between these visits, the police talked loudly about Beverly and
John. Thev hated Beverly Axelrod passionately because she had gotten
Eldridge out of the penitentiary; the fact that she was white only made
her more culpable, I think. They viciously ridiculed her and mocked
John George, making fun of his physical characteristics. All through
this, I lay shackled to the bed, half-drugged and in pain, while they
swaggered about with their guns, waiting for visitors to leave the room,
then threatening to kill me.
Other people visited. I remember nothing distinctly about the first
week or so, but I know that my family came regularly, and I remember
seeing my brothers and sisters in the room from time to time, My mother
183
Revolutionary Suicide
was tcrrihly upset by the whole experience and could not bring herself
I') iiniii! to the hospital. It was almost impossible for people who were
nol relatives or lawyers to get in to see me. Yet, waking up one day, I
be, Mine awaie of a complete stranger in my room, a Black man— neither
a lawyer nor a relative. He was probably a police agent trying to lure
me into a damaging statement, but he went about his task in such a
clumsy, transparent way that he got nowhere. I knew he could not
have entered the room without an assignment to investigate the case
for the police, so I let him do the talking.
Finally Charles Garry came to visit me. Before Beverly mentioned
his name, I had never heard of him, but my respect and trust for her
transferred to him. The Party and my family had decided to put the
whole matter into his hands, from a legal point of view. I was only half-
conscious, and Garry showed deep concern for my pain. That first day
we did not discuss strategy. Garry said simply that he admired my
stand and would be proud to represent me. I returned the compliment.
As I lay recovering from my wounds, I tried to assess my position
to think of the immediate emergency and also its larger meaning and
significance. No doubt about it, I was in serious trouble. I was fully
under the control of my oppressors, and I was charged with a major
crime that could carry the death penalty. As a matter of fact, I expected
to die. At no time before the trial did I expect to escape with my life.
Yet being executed in the gas chamber did not necessarily mean defeat.
It could be one more step to bring the community to a higher level of
consciousness. I was not trying to be heroic, but I had been preparing
myself for death over a long period of time.
When the Party was first organized, I did not think I would live for
more than one year after we began; I thought we would be blasted off
the streets. But I had hoped for that one year to launch the Party, and
any additional time was just a bonus. When I landed in Highland Hos-
pital, I was already living on borrowed time. More had been accom-
plished in one year than Bobby and I had dreamed of when we drew
up our ten-point program in the North Oakland Service Center. Despite
my legal predicament and the prospect of death, I was not discouraged
or unhappy. There would be time to make a few more political state-
ments and to make my ordeal a part of Black consciousness.
This was important. For more than 350 years Black men in this
country have been dying with courage and dignity for causes they be-
lieve in. This aspect of our history has always been known to Black
184
Aftermath
people, but for many the knowledge has been vague. We knew the
names of a few of our martyrs and heroes, but often we were not ac-
quainted with the circumstances or the precise context of their lives.
White America has seen to it that Black history has been suppressed in
schools and in American history books. The bravery of hundreds
of our ancestors who took part in slave rebellions has been lost in
the mists of time, since plantation owners did their best to prevent any
written accounts of uprisings. Millions of Black schoolchildren never
learned about two great Black heroes in the nineteenth century, Den-
mark Vesey and Nat "The Prophet" Turner, who died for freedom,
White people had good reason to destroy our history. Black men
and women who refuse to live under oppression are dangerous to white
society because they become symbols of hope to their brothers and sis-
ters, inspiring them to follow their example. In our time, Malcolm X is
the supreme example. His life and accomplishments galvanized a gen-
eration of young Black people; he helped us take a great stride forward
with a new sense of ourselves and our destiny. But meaningful as his
life was, his death had great significance, too. A new militant spirit was
born when Malcolm died. It was born of outrage and a unified Black
consciousness, out of the sense of a task left undone.
In light of this, I was able to stand back a little and consider my
own death. The Black Panther Party had been formed in the spirit of
Malcolm; we strove for the goals he had set for himself. When Black
people saw Black Panthers being killed not only by the police but also
by the judicial system, they would feel the circle closing around them
and take another step forward. In this sense, my death would not be
meaningless.
After fifteen days in Highland-Alameda Hospital my condition im-
proved, and I was transferred to the medical unit on Death Row in San
Quentin. Officially I was there for my own protection. When the am-
bulance neared Quentin, the police told me to take a good look at its
walls because I was going to be inside them a long, long time. As my
gurney rolled through the halls of San Quentin toward Death Row, one
by one the guards called ahead, "Dead man, dead man, dead man." No
prisoner is allowed to talk to a man bound for Death Row,
The hospital tank at Quentin is right next door to the psychotic
ward. While my cell was well secured — it had three locks — most of the
psychotic cells were left open because those inmates became restless
in a small space. Out in the hall there were things to keep them oc-
185
Revolutionary Suicide
cupied— weight-lifting equipment, a card table and chairs, some games.
One of the mental cases was a Chicano named, I think, Robilar.
Robilar and I hit it off because he identified with the Muslims, and so
did I. All day he would stand outside my cell playing his guitar and
singing to me and saying, "Don't you worry now; everything's going to
be all right."
Robilar had been in and out of prison all his life. This time the beef
was murdering a former cellmate. Like me, he had defended bim-
si'H and lost the case, but the death sentence had been overturned
when Hobilar was declared incompetent to defend himself. After that,
he was brought to the Quentin psychotic ward and locked up. There,
b« tftod mlt his wrists, so they left his cell open and made him a
Nnstv, Kobilar liked to see the doctors dress my wound, and when they
'Mine and removed the bandages, he would move from one end of the
bed Ui the other and hover over the doctors, chattering with excite-
ment,
On my third day at Quentin a new man, a white, was placed in the
cell next to mine. We never learned his name, but we knew he was
scheduled for release in six months. All that day Robilar sang to me, and
when night came, he slipped into the new man's cell and slit his throat
and smashed his skull with a weight-lifting dumbbell. Then he went
back into his own cell and sang over and over:
Hang down your head Tom Dooley,
Hang down your head and cry;
Hang down your head Tom Dooley,
Poor boy you're bound to die.
He was still singing when I fell asleep about ten. Although it hap-
pened right next door, I never knew, and neither did anybody else,
until the guards found the new man dead in his bunk the next morning.
Robilar was finally declared incurably insane. It was his seventh mur-
der, his fourth in prison; all the other prison murders had been cell-
mates.
After two weeks in San Quentin I was well enough to leave. Thev
had carried me in, but I walked out, and from Quentin they took me
to the Alameda County Jail in downtown Oakland, where I had been
before. This time I was to stay there eleven months, before and during
my trial.
186
25
The hypocrisy of Amerikan fascism forces it to coiu'cil
its attack on political offenders by the legal fictien q)
conspiracy laws and highly sophisticated frame-ups. The
masses must be taught to understand the true function
of prisons. Why do they exist in such numbers? What is
the real underlying economic motive of crime and the
official definition of types of offenders or victims? The
people must learn that when one "offends" the totali-
tarian state, it is patently not an offense against the peo-
ple of that state, but an assault upon the privilege of the
privileged few.
George jackson, Blood in My Eye
Strategy
On November 13, 1967, the Alameda County grand jury re-
turned an indictment against me. I was accused of three felonies: the
murder of Patrolman John Frey; the assault of Patrolman Herbert
Heanes with a deadly weapon; the kidnaping of a Black man named
Dell Ross near the scene of the crime, which included my forcing him
to drive me in his car to another part of the city. This is supposedly
how I got to Kaiser Hospital. Dell Ross testified before the grand jury
that I and another man had climbed into his car, pointed a gun at
him, and told him to drive us to the hospital. But before we arrived at
the hospital, he testified, we had jumped out of the car and disappeared
into the night.
Evidence presented to the grand jury included the bullet taken from
Patrolman Frey's back, the bullet taken from Patrolman Heanes's knee,
Heanes's revolver, two nine-millimeter cartridge cases that had been
187
Revolutionary Suicide
found in the street, two matchboxes containing marijuana found under
the seat of the ear I had been driving, various photographs of the cars
at the scene, and a Xerox of the Kaiser Hospital records of my emerg-
ency treatment. Patrolman Ileanes's gun was the only weapon found
at the scene; the nine-millimeter casings were not fired from it. In addi-
tion to this meager evidence, the grand jury heard the testimony of
Heanes, Dell Ross, the police officers who arrived at the scene after the
shooting, the nurse who had admitted me to Kaiser Hospital, and
ballistics experts. It was estimated that seven shots had been fired on
the morning of October 28. Patrolman Heanes had received three
wounds, and Frey had been shot twice, in the thigh and back. A com-
pletely flattened slug, which had probably ricocheted off some other
surface, was found in a door of LaVerne's Volkswagen.
The grand jury took evidence after I was removed from San Quen-
tin to the County Jail in Oakland. Although severely wounded only a
few weeks earlier, I was recuperating rapidly and was strong enough to
begin planning the political strategy for my trial. I did not want to
deal with the legalities — just political strategy. The number-one politi-
cal decision made by the Party was that the attorneys stay out of all
political decisions concerning the trial. I needed to know the legal
ramifications of anv move, of course, and I would not question them,
but legal niceties were definitely secondary. The ideological and po-
litical significance of the trial was of primary importance.
Bv political strategy I mean this: I wanted to use the trial as a
political forurn to prove that having to fight for my life was the logical
and inevitable outcome of our efforts to lift the oppressor's burden.
The Black Panthers' activities and programs, the patrolling of the police,
and the resistance to their brutality had disturbed the power structure,
now it was gathering its forces to crush our revolution forever. Public
attention was assured. Why not use the courtroom and the media to
educate our people 3 To us, the key point in the trial was police brutal-
it}', but we hoped to do more than articulate that. We also wanted to
show that the other kinds of violence poor people suffer — unemploy-
ment, poor housing, inferior education, lack of public facilities, the
inequity of the draft— were part of the same fabric. If we could organ-
ize people against police brutality, as we had begun to do, we might
move them toward eliminating related forms of oppression. The sys-
tem, in fact, destroys us through neglect much more often than by the
188
Strategy
pohce revolver. The gun is only the coup de grdce, the enforcer. To
wipe out the conditions leading up to the coup de gm Ce _that was our
goal. The gun and the murder it represented would then fade away
Thus for the Black Panther Party, the goal of the trial was not pri-
manly to save my life, but to organize the people and advance their
struggle.
Our goal was not to save my life, because I had accepted what I
thought was a certain fate: they would kill me. Everything we did in
the next eleven months was predicated on my death' My life had to
come to an end sometime, but the people go on; in them'lies the pos-
Mb.lity for immortality. The dialectic teaches that all men long for im-
mortality, and this longing is one of the contradictions between man
and nature. Man tries to resolve the certainty of death through reversal
by bnngmg it under control, which is a form of the will to power But
since each man eventually gives up his life, death can be controlled only
through the ongoing life of the people.
Because I saw my death drawing closer, I often wondered how I
would prepare for it. A person never knows how he will act prior to
the experience itself. Knowing that the most valuable thing anyone
bas is his life, I could not be sure m what way I would give it up
particularly under the threat of the gas chamber.' I had faced death be-
fore, but under different circumstances. There had been a spontaneity
and a suddenness in each confrontation, and the possibility of outwit-
ting death. But when the state kills you, there are no odds, the in-
evitability of death is absolute. To face execution by the state demands
a speaal k,nd of courage-the ability to act with grace and dignity ,n
a totally degrading situation. It is the ultimate form of truth
The first defense strategy that Charles Garry decided upon was a
-series of pretrial .notions in state and federal courts questioning the
validity of grand juries-to prove that my indictment was both illegal
and unjust. Garry not only presented arguments against the composition
of grand ,ur,es, which rarely represent a cross-seetion of the community
but also maintained that the system itself is unconstitutional. An indicl-
men .by a grand jury, he argued, imperils the right to a fair trial. In a
grand jury hearing, which i.s always held in secret, the defendant and
his lawyer are not present. Evidence against the accused is presented
to the jury by the district attorney, but no cross-examination is allowed
and no evidence can be introduced by the defenda.it. While it is true
189
Revolutionary Suicide
that grand jury testimony is inadmissable at trials, the fact that the
transcript of a grand jury hearing can be published by the press offers
little chance of public impartiality toward the accused. Public opinion
can be greatly influenced by these transcripts, especially since all
evidence and testimony are presented at the discretion of the district
attorney, who is out to prove the defendant's guilt. So it hardly seems
fair that a trial jury can then be selected from citizens who have heard
of or read the evidence that was responsible for an indictment. After
all, an indictment means only that the grand jury felt there was enough
evidence of guilt to bring the accused to trial.
Garry also argued that in asking for a grand jury hearing in my
case the prosecutor was doing something unusual and prejudiced.
Alameda County statistics show that only 3 per cent of all cases go be-
lore grand juries. The rest are heard in what are known as "informa-
tions," where both sides argue before a judge, who then has the sole
decision of calling a trial. In an "information" witnesses can be cross-
examined, a procedure not allowed in grand jury hearings. In my case
the prosecutor clearly wanted testimony presented to a grand jury in
order to influence public opinion against me.
Carry also criticized the whole process of grand jury selection. In
California, each of the twenty Superior Court judges recommends three
persons as grand jurors; these nominees are supposed to be known to
the judge personally. Obviously, few judges in Alameda County would
be acquainted with many of the 200,000 Black people who live there.
As a matter of fact, the only Black person who sat on my grand jury
was absent on the day evidence was presented. Judges tend to choose
white upper-middle-class citizens— businessmen, conservative house-
wives, brokers, bankers, retired army officers, and so forth, who are
for the most part middle-aged and without the faintest understanding
of the lives of poor Black people. Most of them, in fact, are hostile to
Blacks. How, then, are they qualified to have any insight into the
events or attitudes that bring such defendants before them?
One of Garry's presentations concerned the physical movements
of the grand jury. After examining the official court 'transcripts of my
hearing, Garry proved that the grand jury could not possibly have con-
sidered or discussed any of the evidence presented to them. He did a
very thorough job of analyzing the minute-by-minute movements of
the jurors on the final day of deliberations. The result was astonishing.
190
Strategy
The time sequence of the jury's movements that day, as recorded in the
official transcript, proves that there could not have been any discus-
sion or deliberation about my case. After all the evidence had been
presented, the members of the grand jury went into the room where
they were supposed to consider the evidence and shut the door. Almost
immediately they came out. Since the evidence concerning my guilt
was nonexistent — not one person had testified that I carried or fired a
gun — their failure to spend any time weighing the issue is incredible.
In exposing their indifference and fraudulence, Garry strongly rein-
forced his contention that grand juries are insensitive to the problems
of the poor and oppressed.
After filing briefs that questioned the constitutionality of the
grand jury system, Garry turned to the inequities in the trial system
itself. He and his staff did research on how jurors are chosen to serve.
Alameda County, like most of the country, selects its juries from the
county voter-registration list, and there, as elsewhere, the number of
registered voters from Black communities is far smaller than those from
the white population. Furthermore, if selected for jury duty, many
Black people have legitimate reasons for declining: economic hardship
and inconvenience are involved, Because of this, few members of minor-
ity groups are available to decide the fate of their peers. Again, Garry-
raised the question of whether, under these circumstances, a Black man
can receive a fair trial in America.
From November until the following July, when my trial began,
Garry was busy and overworked, filing these motions in the California
courts. Nine months is an exceptionally long time between indictment
and trial, The delay in my case was not only inevitable, because of the
time-consuming pretrial hearings, but desirable. The media had made
me a celebrity through television and hysterical newspaper accounts.
The death of a policeman always incites a large percentage of the popu-
lation to cry vengeance. Many people believed I was guilty. Then, too,
the Oakland police were in a state of frenzy. On October 17, less than
two weeks before the Frey shooting, they had once again demonstrated
their brutality at a protest rally of 4,000 demonstrators in Oakland. That
day they attacked the demonstrators so viciously and with so little
provocation that the entire media, even William Knowland's Tribune,
criticized their behavior. The day became known as "Bloody Tuesday."
As a result, the police were very much on the defensive and anxious
191
Revolutionary Suicide
to vindicate themselves. To do this, they had to keep demonstrating how
threatened they were, particularly by the Black Panthers. Their at-
tacks on the brothers increased. At one point David Hilliard was ar-
rested on the street for handing out leaflets about my case; as far as I
know, leafletting has never been against the law, At any rate, Garry
wanted emotions to subside to improve my chances for a more objective
trial.
While the police were stepping up their harassment of the Black
Panthers, other people in the Oakland area were rallying to help me.
The Party decided that a broad base of support would be necessary in
order to win allies and raise funds for my defense. So in December the
Black Panther Party announced a coalition with the Peace and Freedom
Party. This organization was made up mostly of young whites who op-
posed the war in Vietnam and who also felt that the two-party system
was no longer working. They saw a need for a third party that could
run strong antiwar leaders in the 1968 national election as well as
combat the evils in our society. Ultimately, when the Peace and Free-
dom Party became a legal party in most states, Eldridge was its can-
didate for President, along with Jerry Rubin for Vice-President. But
mainly the alliance between the Black Panthers and the Peace and Free-
dom Party was meant to demonstrate that racism and police oppression
were responsible for my being in jail and that I was falsely accused of
the murder of Patrolman Frey. The phrase "Free Huev" was created
out of this coalition; it became a rallying cry for people who believed
in my innocence.
Meanwhile, all across the country. Black people were relating to
my imprisonment. The Black Panthers were recruiting members in
every major city and also in some of the rural areas, In some cases,
people just formed a group and called themselves Black Panthers with-
out even getting in touch with central headquarters. Sometimes, groups
would form around our ten-point program and use another name. It
was all the same; the community was becoming educated; their con-
sciousness was being raised.
We were also gaining international attention. Soon, groups in other
countries began to ask us to send speakers. At that time we still con-
sidered ourselves revolutionary nationalists, that is, Black nationalists
who took a revolutionary position in the United States. We had not as
yet developed an international policy. But some Black Panthers made
192
Strategy
trips out of the United States to explain our position and describe the
nature of American oppression. One of these trips was to Japan, where
a group of revolutionary Japanese students, Zengakuren, invited the
Black Panthers to speak at a number of conferences organized by left-
wing students. We chose Kathleen Cleaver, whom Eldridge had re-
cently married, and Earl Anthony, a Black Panther, to make the trip.
Earl was a Party member from Los Angeles with a college degree. Even
though the Los Angeles chapter had had some problems with him, he
was considered competent and articulate enough to speak for the
Party. However, in Hawaii, both Kathleen and Earl experienced some
delay in getting their visas cleared by the Japanese consulate. Kathleen
decided to return to California, and Earl went on by himself.
When Anthony got to Japan, everything went wrong. Instead of
stating the Party's position, he presented a personal platform, a strictly-
white and Black line — about how the Black world would fight the white
world, and that would be the end of it. His whole talk was just that
simple, the same line Stokely Carmichael was following. He showed no
awareness of class issues and did not even try to describe them in
terms of this country. To him the whole problem was a matter of
racism, which cried out for separatism.
I heard a tape recording of some of the Japanese sessions— a friend
brought it to me — and I was angered. The Japanese students put An-
thony down left and right. They asked good questions — questions that
dealt with contradictions in a dialectical way — whereas Anthony was
dealing in absolutes. For him, all meaning lay in the white world's
oppression of Blacks, Certainly, this is much of the problem, but it fits
into a larger context, Ironically, it was the Japanese students who stated
the Party's actual position by pointing out other reasons and circum-
stances that complicate the Black-white situation. Anthony betrayed
the purpose of his visit by going on a solo trip and narrowing the pos-
sibilities of international solidarity. No wonder the Japanese students
were disillusioned with the Party. To this day, I do not know whether
Kathleen Cleaver had anything to do with Anthony's confusion. She has
always been a kind of cultist in her Black nationalism, so she may have
influenced him. Kathleen really loved the Party, but I doubt that
either she or Eldridge ever completely accepted our ideology,
Anywav, when we heard the tapes, we were disgusted. The Central
Committee censured Anthony and relieved him of all duties dealing
193
Revolutionary Suicide
with sensitive issues. He went hack to Los Angeles and worked with the
Party for a while, but eventually dropped out and wrote a shallow and
opportunistic book about the Party. For this, he was expelled. At the
time, we needed writers to help our cause, not people on ego trips.
Incidents like this are depressing when you are unable to deal with
them directly. At the time, since I was the victim of a police frame-up,
it was probably best that I remain in prison. In this way, my incarcera-
tion was a continual reminder to the outside world of the outrageous
tactics of the police. Every day they kept me there I grew as a symbol
of the brutalization of the poor and Black as well as a living reproach
to society's indifference to the inequities of the legal system. "Free
Hue}'" became a powerful slogan, and the words went far beyond
me to become a cry for liberation of all Blacks.
But the eleven months I spent at the Alameda County Court House
waiting for trial were not easy. The prison routine was deadly, the food
bad, and the guards corrupt. Most of my stay was spent in solitary —
because I had protested the way prisoners were treated. My cell was
four and a half feet by six feet with no window in it, not even in the
door (eventually they did cut out a small hole in the door and covered
it with thick wire). It was so swelteringly hot that I often took off all
my clothes to get relief; even breathing was hard work, since there was
no ventilation in the cell. A bunk, a wash basin, and a toilet were there
— nothing more. I got out only three afternoons a week — Monday,
Wednesday, and Friday — when my family came or when I saw my
lawyers. Even visiting was unpleasant. The visiting rooms were tiny
cubicles with a steel wall between prisoners and visitors. You had to
talk through a round, screened hole and put your ear to another hole
to hear the reply. Usually the babble from other visitors and prisoners
made conversation strained. Fortunately, I was able to send letters and
tapes out with my lawyers to friends and the Part}'. (The tapes were
made in the attorney's room.) I was never actually out of touch, and
never tempted to give up, largely because of the strong support I had,
not only from the people but also from Charles Garry and the attorneys
who were working with him on my case. These were Alexander Hoff-
mann, a lawyer active in civil rights cases in the Bay Area; Fay
Stender, who was later to be involved in George Jackson's case at
Soledad and thereafter; John Escobedo, a Chicano lawyer; and Carlton
Innis, a Black lawyer. Later, attorney Edward Keating, the founder of
Ramparts magazine, joined the others.
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Strategy
The brothers on the outside worked unceasingly for my defense.
They went into Black communities in the Bay Area collecting money,
they moved onto college campuses and talked to students; they spoke
and held forums and organized rallies. When Bobby Seale got out of
jail in December (he had been released before his six months were up),
he worked full time organizing for my defense. The police never let
up on him, either, and one night in February they busted into his apart-
ment and arrested him for having a weapon, which they had planted
there. It was such an obvious frame-up that the judge let him off. On
Februarv 17, in}' birthday, and the next day, two huge rallies were held,
one in Oakland and one in Los Angeles. Many leaders of the Black
revolutionary movement in the United States spoke at them, including
H. Rap Brown, then chairman of SNCC, and James Forman. then head
of SNCC's New York office.
Among them, also, was Stokely Carmichael, who came to the jail
to see me. He had just returned from a trip around the world — to
Africa, Cuba, and Vietnam — and a lot of his ideas had changed in a
short time.
Our visit lasted just long enough for us to disagree. Stokely began by
telling me what it would take to get me out of jail. The only thing that
would do it, he said, was armed rebellion, culminating in a race war.
I disagreed with him. While I acknowledged the pervasiveness of rac-
ism, the larger problem should be seen in terms of class exploitation and
the capitalist system. In analyzing what was happening in the country,
I said that we would have [o accept many alliances and form solidarity
with any people fighting the common oppressor. He objected to the
Black Panther alliance with the Peace and Freedom Party and said we
should not associate with white radicals or let them come to our meet-
ings or be involved in our rallies. Stokely warned that whites would de-
stroy the movement, alienate Black people, and lessen our effective-
ness in the community. Later, he proved right in terms of what hap-
pened to the Party, although he was wrong in principle. As a result of
coalitions, the Black Panthers were brought into the free speech move-
ment, the psychedelic fad, and the advocacy of drugs, which we were
and are dead set against. All these causes were irrelevant to our work,
which was concerned with deeper and more fundamental issues, in fact,
survival. When these things happened, Stokely warned, whites would
try to take the leadership from us.
I did not believe him while he was running these things down to me.
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Revolutionary Suicide
We were not into a racist bag, I told him, and these developments were
not inevitable. At the time I felt sure that Stokely was afraid of himself
and his own weaknesses. I responded to his racist analysis with a class
analysis. We could have solidarity and friendship in a common struggle
against a common oppressor without the whites taking over. But in the
thirty-three months I spent in jail our leadership did falter, and serious
frictions developed between the Black Panthers and white radicals.
Not until I got out of jail nearly three years later were we able to start
putting everything together again.
One of my most unhappy moments during the period I was await-
ing trial was when I learned of Little Bobby Hutton's murder on April
6, 1968. News of the shoot-out came over the prison radio. I was
shocked but not surprised. The police claimed Little Bobby was shot
trying to escape, but we knew that for the same lie told by southern
sheriffs for years. Black people were not fooled either. A terrible frus-
tration and rage arose in the community. Little Bobby was murdered
only two days after Martin Luther King's assassination, and the people
were still staggering under that blow. After King's death Police Chief
Gain had canceled all police leaves and doubled the number of occupy-
ing troops in our community, which only intensified the sense of anger
and despair. With Bobby's murder, tension mounted in Oakland, along
with the fear that the Black community would riot.
On the morning of April 7, Charles Garry and Bobby Seale came to
see me. Eldridge had been arrested after the shooting, and Garry was
going to defend him. He and Bobby were on their way that morning
to a press conference at the police station, and they wanted a message
for the people. I gave them a tape I had made, urging the people not
to riot spontaneously. This would only give the police an opportunity
to continue the massacre. The people should arm themselves for pro-
tection when the police moved in to brutalize them, but not make
themselves targets for defenseless slaughter. Charles Garry delivered
my message at the press conference and also made a statement to the
media about the deliberate murder of Little Bobby by the police. Of
course, Police Chief Gain exploded at that and accused Garry on radio
and television of intemperate and false statements. However, a former
member of the Oakland Police Department, a Black man, recently con-
firmed to us in private that Little Bobby was murdered outright. He
had witnessed the murder that night. Bobby's death really tore me up.
196
Strategy
I became even more determined to use my trial as an organizing point
against these murders.
Meanwhile, Charles Garry was persevering in his motions to chal-
lenge the jury selection system. As a matter of fact, his efforts continued
right up until the day my trial began. His investigations have had a
profound effect on the whole judicial system, and their repercussions
can be seen all over the country today. It is largely because of Garry's
work that courts all over the country have become aware of a defend-
ant's right to be tried by a jury of his peers. But in the summer of
1968, he was still fighting for this right as the date of my trial came
nearer and nearer.
197
1
Part Five
Let us go on outdoing ourselves; a revolutionary man
always transcends himself or otherwise he is not a revolu-
tionary man, so we always do what we ask of ourselves
or more than what we know we can do.
J
26
We knew before Huey's trial began in mid-July that the
whole power structure wanted to hang Huey. We un-
derstood that William Knowland (the publisher of the
Oakland Tribune), the mayor, the other politicians, the
D.A., and the cops were all so treacherous that thev
would do anything to get a conviction and send Huey to
the gas chamber.
We asked Charles Garry a number of times what he
thought would happen. He would run it down, how
Huev was really innocent, and how the two cops had
shot each other in an attempt to kill Huey.
bobby seale, Seize the Time
Trial
The morning my trial began, on July 15, 196S, in the Alameda
County Court House, 5,000 demonstrators and about 450 Black Panthers
gathered outside to show their support. Busloads of demonstrators came
from out of town and joined the throng that crowded the streets and
sidewalks outside the courthouse. Across the street from the building
a formation of Black Panthers stood, lined up two deep, and stretching
for a solid block. At the entrance to the building a unit of sisters from
the Party chanted "Free Huey" and "Set Our Warrior Free." In front
of them, on both sides of the courthouse door two Party members held
aloft the blue Black Panther banner with free huey emblazoned on it.
Black Panther security patrols with walkie-talkie radio sets ringed the
courthouse.
The building was under heavy guard. At every entrance and pa-
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Revolutionary Suicide
trolling even' floor, armed deputies from the sheriff's office prowled up
and down, and plain-clothes men were assigned positions throughout
the building. On that first day nearly fifty helmeted Oakland police
stood inside the main entrance, and on the rooftop more cops with high-
powered rifles stared down into the street. The trial was conducted in
the seventh-floor courtroom, a small depressing room kept ice cold
throughout the trial. Security was so tight that the courtroom was care-
fully inspected before every session; everyone, even my parents, was
searched before entering. The spectators' section had only about sixty
seats: two rows were reserved for my family; the press had twenty-five
or so seats; and the rest was for the general public. Ever}' morning
around dawn people began lining up outside for the few remaining
places.
Presiding was Superior Court Judge Monroe Friedman, seventy-two
years old, dour and humorless. Of course, no one admits prejudice, but
Judge Friedman betrayed his in countless ways throughout the trial,
Clearly, from the beginning he thought I was guilty, and his sym-
pathies lay with the prosecution. For one thing, he condescended to
Black witnesses, speaking to them as if they were not capable of under-
standing the issues. It was obvious that he was totally unaware of the
development of Black consciousness in the past decade. Even his tone
of voice was revealing. As the trial progressed, he constantly overruled
my lawyer and sustained almost ever)' objection of the prosecutor.
Sometimes, when he did not like the way things were going, he looked
over to the prosecutor's table as if inviting an objection, which he would
then sustain. On interpretation, he was extremely rigid. Whenever a
legal point could not be solved by legal mechanics, he would pass it
off as unimportant, thereby leaving it for some higher court to deal
with or for some political statement to be made through the legislature.
Nothing was considered that was not in the book. He acknowledged
that some laws were good and reluctantly followed those he disliked.
Never for one moment did I consider him a fair arbitrator.
The most crucial aspect of the trial was the jurv selection, and on
that first trial dav several hundred prospective jurors came to the court-
house, Charles Garry wanted a certain kind of juror, and he faced
terrific odds in finding him. For one thing, overvone in the Oakland
area had read or seen prejudicial accounts of the shooting. It was dif-
ficult to find anyone without an opinion about the case. Then, too, we
202
Trial
wanted some Black people. This was a vital issue and, as we learned
through our investigations, a formidable hurdle to overcome. Our in-
quiries revealed that the assistant district attorney and prosecutor in
my trial, Lowell Jensen, had developed a system whereby Blacks would
ostensibly be on jury panels called for duty but would always be elimi-
nated before they were seated in an actual trial. Under Jensen's direc-
tion whenever a Black was removed from a prospective jury for cause,
or through peremptory challenges, he was then returned to the jury
panel and called in another trial. That way, it always appeared the
Blacks were an active part of the system, even though it was unlikely
a Black would ever serve on an actual jury. When my trial began, the
routine changed; other district attorneys in the area did not remove
Blacks from their jury panels. Therefore, while my trial was in session
there were juries in other courts with as many as six Blacks on them.
The Party instructed Garry to use all his peremptory challenges on
prospective jurors. In a capital case in the state of California each side
is allowed' twenty, that is, both defense and prosecution can reject
twenty jurors without giving a reason. We gave Garry these instructions
to demonstrate to the people that something is wrong with a trial svs-
tem that defies the right of a defendant to be tried by a true cross-sec-
tion of his community. We used all our peremptory challenges to em-
phasize this point. The prosecution did not exhaust all theirs, since it
was not hard for them to find their kind of people. (Charles Garry
found racism in almost every prospective juror he questioned. )
Selecting the jury took a long time — about two weeks. All in all,
three panels of prospective jurors— about ISO people — were questioned
before a jury and four alternates were chosen. Out of the nearly two
hundred people available for my jury, there were sixteen Blacks, a few
Orientals, and one or two Chicanos. The population of Oakland was
then 38 per cent Black.
The final jury consisted of eleven whites and one Black. The Black
man, David Harper, actually looked enough like me to pass as a rela-
tive, although we were strangers before the trial. At the time, he was an
executive in a branch of the Bank of America, but he has since become
president of a Black bank in Detroit. I wondered why the district at-
torney did not excuse him from serving. Perhaps he figured it would
help his case in the Appeals Court to have at least one Black on the
jury. Also, he had tried to get a safe one. I figured that the district
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Revolutionary Suicide
attorney saw Harper as a "house nigger," a Black bank official who "had
it made," so to speak. Thev probably thought Harper could be counted
on because of his status and his ambition to go further in the white
world,
Throughout the trial I studied Harper, trying to get the measure
of the man. Would he go along with the madness of the system? With a
jury it is always a guessing game. You know the judge and the prosecu-
tor are your enemies and will do anything to keep you down. Every
other paid employee in the courtroom, regardless of his color, is a
slave to the system. But the jurors are something else. I watched every
move Harper made, yet I could not detect where he was, or where he
was going. I began to wonder if the fact that he had a good job in a
bank gave him satisfaction. I asked myself whether he was so blinded
by the crumbs the system offered him that he would go along with the
racists on the jury and a corrupt state apparatus to secure his future
— or what he hoped might be his future.
These questions went through my mind almost daily as the pro-
ceedings crept along. Sometimes, pondering Harper, I found myself
paying no attention at all to the boring testimony of the prosecution
witnesses, such as the ballistics experts. Not until I took the stand my-
self and began talking to the jury did I feel Harper knew his friends
better than the district attorney had estimated. When I finally testified,
I directed my words to Harper. He was my audience. An unspoken
bond grew up between us that convinced me he not only understood
but he also agreed with me. Only then did I sec a glimmer of hope with
the jury — he was it. However, I never placed much confidence in his
ability to sway the others.
The prosecutor in my case was Lowell Jensen, who later became
district attorney of Alameda Count}-. Jensen is a witty and intelligent
man and a worthy opponent as far as the law is concerned. He appears
to have a photographic memory, and on the basis of legal knowledge
alone he is a good lawyer, In my case, he meant to get a conviction of
first-degree murder, no matter how far he had to stretch the law. and
to that end, he ignored the possibility that there were a number of
grounds for reversal and that in time a higher court would decide
against the verdict of this trial. A conviction was all he cared about. He
knew that if he won his case against me — a person hated by the Estab-
lishment — he would be rewarded with fame and rising fortune. What
204
Trial
would a reversal matter? A ruling by a higher court would take from
two to five years, and by that time he would have achieved what lie
wanted. My trial was nothing more than an ego trip for him.
Throughout the trial an unspoken "game" or challenge went on in
the courtroom between Jensen, the judge, and myself, although a lot
of people— especially the jury — knew nothing about it. The jury prob-
ably believed that the prosecutor and the judge were honorable men,
with only their jobs and justice on their minds. But my lawyers and I
understood the undercurrents and intangibles that were always present,
difficult as the}' were to expose. And we knew that if the jury were
aware of them also they would see the political nature of much that
went on in the courtroom. For example, we surmised from the very start
of the trial that Jensen had engineered the racist system by which
Blacks would be on jury panels called for duty but eliminated before
they could be seated for trial. And we knew that Jensen did not have
justice on his mind but wanted victory at any cost to further his own
personal ambitions. These were some of the things that made the whole
trial scene like a game— a grim game with my life at stake — but a game
nonetheless.
In his opening statement to the jury Jensen charged that I had mur-
dered Officer John Frey with full intent, that I had shot Officer Herbert
Heanes, and that I had kidnaped Dell Ross. He said that when the first
policeman stopped me I had given him false identification, but when
the second officer came up, I had correctly identified myself. Then the
first officer, Frey, placed me under arrest. He claimed that when the
police officer walked me back to his car, I produced a gun and began
firing. According to Jensen, I shot Officer Frey with my own gun,
which I pulled from inside my shirt, then took his gun and continued
shooting. I was charged with shooting Officer Frey five times and
Officer Heanes three times. Officer Heanes was supposed to have shot
me once. After this, the prosecutor said, I escaped and forced Dell Ross
to take me to another part of Oakland.
The most crucial challenge facing the prosecution was to establish
motivation for my alleged actions. Jensen claimed that I had three
motives for my alleged crimes. First, he said, I had had a prior convic-
tion for a felony and was on probation. Because of this, I knew that
having a concealed weapon on my person could lead to another felony
conviction if the police officers found the gun on me. Second, they
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Revolutionary Suicide
claimed that I had marijuana in the car and that bits of marijuana had
been found in the pocket of my pants; this, too, could lead to another
felony beef. And, third, they claimed that I had given false identifica-
tion to the police officer, which was a violation of the law. For these
reasons, the prosecutor claimed I was so desperate to escape another
felony charge that I killed an officer, wounded another, and kidnaped
a citizen. As I said before, the prosecutor was willing to go to any
lengths to win his case.
The truth of the matter is that when Frey stopped me, he knew
full well who I was, as did every other policeman on the Oakland
force, and he tried to execute me in an urban variation of the old-style
southern lynching. My attorneys had investigated Frey's background,
and they found a long history of harassing and mistreating Black peo-
ple and making racist statements about Blacks and to Blacks. Unfor-
tunately for Frey, his habits boomeranged that time. I do not know
what happened because I was unconscious, but things did not work
out as he wanted or expected them to. I guess he thought that if he
could bring me in dead, he would be given a promotion.
The marijuana charge was sheer fabrication, First of all, no member
of the Black Panther Party uses drugs. It is absolutely forbidden. Any-
one discovered violating this rule is expelled from the Party. Narcotics
prohibition is part of the Black Panther principle of obeying the law to
the letter. Both Charles Garry and I believed that the marijuana found
in the car and in my trousers was planted there by the police. Having
been stopped by members of the Oakland police force more than fifty
times in the past year, why would I take the risk? Knowing that at any
moment of the day or night I was liable to be thoroughly searched and
my car inspected, I would never have been reckless enough to carry
marijuana, even if I had wanted to use it — which I didn't. If the match-
boxes really were in La Verne's car that night, there is no way of know-
ing how they got there. Dozens of people used her car, many of whom
she knew only slightly, since they were friends of friends. But it is far
more likely that the police were behaving as usual, leaving out no
possibility in their determination to railroad me to jail.
As for being a felon with a gun, I, of course, was not carrying a
weapon but had been out celebrating the end of my probation that
night. There was no reason for me to have a gun and no reason to
avoid arrest on this count. Nor did I consider myself a felon. The
206
Trial
original conviction of felon}' was a complicated one, anyway, going
back to the Odell Lee case in 1964. Under California law, the sentence
a defendant receives determines whether he is a "felon" or a "misde-
meanant." If he is sentenced to a state prison, he is a felon; a misde-
meanant usually goes to a county jail. When I was convicted of assault-
ing Odell Lee with a deadly weapon, I was sentenced to three years'
probation, a condition being that I serve six months in the county jail.
This meant I was a misdemeanant. However, in my murder trial the
judge testified that I had been sentenced to the state prison and that
then the sentence had been suspended. As a condition of my probation
I spent six months in the countv jail. Technically the state considered
me a felon. In the end, this proved to be reversible error. Although I
could have changed my legal status in the courts, I never petitioned
because I did not consider myself a felon.
But the prosecution did, and planned its whole case around the
point. Not only did they want to show I would commit murder to avoid
arrest, but they also wanted to take advantage of the fact that a felon's
testimony can be discredited and he can receive a severer sentence.
Despite Charles Garry's objections and arguments, Judge Friedman
ruled that I had been convicted of a felony in 1964, and this charge
against me was added to the other three. This question of the Odell
Lee conviction came up repeatedly during the trial, since the prosecu-
tion needed to establish a motive. Eventually, when I testified, I told
the jury again that I had not considered myself a felon. It was actually
a ridiculous basis for motivation, since I had dozens of witnesses who
saw me out celebrating on the night of October 27 — a fact which
proved bevond doubt that I had no reason to resist arrest as a felon.
When my trial was just beginning, Eldridge Cleaver put out a leaflet
that was widely distributed in the Black community. In it he charged
that the police, with murder on their minds, had violated the territorial
integrity of the Black community and that I had dealt with their trans-
gression in a necessary way. The leaflet went on to say that Black peo-
ple are justified in killing all policemen who do this. Behind Eldridge's
message lay the inference that I had killed the police officer, even
though I had not.
The leaflet could not have been used against me in the courts. Even
so, my family was very upset over it, and they protested strongly to
Eldridge. They felt he cared little about me and that he was, in effect,
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Revolutionary Suicide
trying to gas me. I told them as gently as I could not to interfere with
anything Eldridge or other Party members did during the trial because
such actions could not be brought into the legal proceedings. As far as
I was concerned, Eldridge was free to write and mobilize the com-
munity by any means necessary; I supported him in that. Issuing the
leaflet was a political act using the trial to heighten the consciousness
of the community. I was willing to go along with Party actions in the
interest of educating the people, mobilizing the community, and taking
the contradictions to a higher level. After that my family did not inter-
fere with political activities.
The trial caused much grief and worry to my family. They wanted
to save me, but I felt death was ahead, and my main concern was the
community, Because my family continued to hope, I could not tell
them this, however, and I was very moved by their faith and support.
In fact, the only strain I felt during the trial was the pull between try-
ing to comfort my family and carrying out the political activities I
knew were necessary. It has all worked out for the best now, but at
the time it was a tremendous weight on my family, and on me.
Another matter of concern was whether to reveal to my attorneys
the name of Gene McKinney, my passenger on the night the incident
went down. Gene had never been apprehended by the police, despite a
diligent search. What is more, they did not even know his name. From
the start, the police had cleared Gene, and Heanes had testified before
the grand jury that my companion had not taken part in any violence.
Right after I was captured, the police sent broadcasts all through
California saying that they had apprehended the "guilty" party and
they wanted the passenger to come in for questioning. They repeatedly
said in these broadcasts that the passenger had nothing to do with the
incident, I suspected that they wanted to use him against me, and at
first I refused to give his name to my attorneys. I saw no point in in-
volving Gene, even though I knew his testimony might help free me.
Onlv when my lawyers had convinced me that legally the prosecution
could not do anything to him did I agree to reveal Gene's identity.
From my own knowledge of the law, I became aware that the courts
were powerless to hurt him. However, Gene was skeptical. When my
lawyers finally met him, they explained very carefully that he could
not be hurt by testifying for the defense, and he did eventually testify
despite his doubts. This showed supreme courage on his part, because
the prosecutors were not above pulling some trick to involve him.
208
Trial
The prosecution took about three weeks to present its case and
called about twenty witnesses to the stand. They included people like
the nurse who had admitted me at Kaiser Hospital, the doctor who did
the autopsy on Officer Frey, ballistics experts from the police depart-
ment, various policemen who arrived at the scene of the shooting, and
so on. But their three most important witnesses were Patrolman Heanes,
Henry Grier, the bus driver who allegedly witnessed the shooting, and
Dell Ross, who claimed that McKinney and I had kidnaped him. The
first of these to testify was Herbert Heanes.
When Officer Heanes took the witness stand, it soon became appar-
ent that he was a very disturbed man. He told of recurring dreams in
which the Black Panthers were attacking him. Heanes is not very-
bright, and as time and again he had trouble keeping his story straight,
the impression grew that he was completely confused. The prosecutor
had obviously rehearsed him, but Heanes was so tense that he made
mistakes; with each mistake he dropped his head as if to say, I'll try the
script over again. He was no good at all at improvisation and reconcil-
ing contradictions in his testimony.
Heanes testified that after Frey ordered me out of my car, the two
of us walked to Heanes's patrol car (parked behind LaVerne's Volks-
wagen) while he, Heanes, remained near the front door of Frey's patrol
car, about thirty-five feet away from us. As Frey and I reached the
rear of Heanes's car, Heanes testified that I "turned around and started
shooting," and that Frey and I then started to "tussle" on the trunk of
his car. At this point, Heanes said, he was shot in the right arm, where-
upon he switched his gun to his left hand. Immediately after this, he
noticed out of the corner of his eye that the passenger in my car
(McKinney) had gotten out of the Volkswagen and was standing on
the curb with his arms up in the air. Heanes turned his gun on him, but
after the passenger assured him he was not armed, Heanes turned back
to Frey and me. By this time, Heanes said, Frey and I had separated,
although Frey was still hanging on to me, and he, Heanes, shot at my
stomach as I faced him. He did not say that he saw his bullet hit me,
only that he fired at my "midsection." After that, Heanes said he re-
membered only two things: first, sending out a 940B— the police emer-
gency number — over the police radio; and second, seeing two men run
into the darkness.
When Garry cross-examined Heanes after his testimony, many-
contradictions and unanswered questions emerged. Heanes repeatedly
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Revolutionary Suicide
stated that he never saw a gun in my hand, yet he testified that I had
turned around and started to shoot. He was never able to say who had
shot him in the arm, although when he shot me in the stomach, he said
I was facing him. He would not state that I had shot him, even though,
as a police officer, he is supposedly trained to observe such facts as
whether or not a suspect has a gun. He was confused in his descrip-
tions of what McKinney was wearing; some of his testimony con-
tradicted the description given later by Henry Grier, the bus driver.
Perhaps the greatest weakness of his testimony, which Garry skill-
fully brought to the jury's attention, was that Heanes had turned his
back on McKinney, having only McKinney's word that he was unarmed.
Since the Oakland police distrusted and hated all Black Panthers, and
since McKinney, who was unknown to Heanes, and who was riding
with the Black Panther Minister of Defense, could very well have been
a Black Panther, why had he left himself so unprotected, particularly
since he said he did not know where all the shots were coming from?
As Garry suggested in his cross-examination of Heanes, it was probably
because Heanes was more worried about what Frey would do. Among
the police Frey was known to need watching in the Black community;
he was even worse than the normal cop, which made him extremely-
dangerous.
It was clear from Heanes's testimony and the way he had been
coached by the prosecutor that great pains had been taken to avoid
any implication that Frey and Heanes had shot each other. Charles
Garry's first question on cross-examination dealt with this: "Did you
shoct and kill Officer Frey?" Heanes said no. Yet several facts pointed
that way, and Heanes's evasions were not helpful to the prosecution.
For instance, Heanes made a point of saying that he fired at me only
when Frey and I had broken apart after our struggle on the car. A more
damaging piece of evidence came from the ballistics section of the
police department itself. The expert who testified concluded that the
bullets that had hit both Frey and Heanes came from police revolvers.
They were lead bullets — not copper-jacketed, as were the two nine-
millimeter casings found on the ground at the scene of the shooting.
This damaged the prosecution's case, because Jensen had maintained
from the beginning that I had shot Heanes and Frey with my own .38
pistol whose bullets would have matched the nine-millimeter casings
found on the ground. Of course, this mythical gun was never found.
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Trial
All in all, Heanes's testimony did little for the prosecution. He be-
came even more muddled during my second trial, and by the time he
appeared at the third trial, he found it impossible to deal with his own
inconsistencies. It was then that he broke down on the stand and ad-
mitted seeing a third party at the scene of the shooting, But even at
my first trial his testimony was too vague and inconsistent to be taken
seriously.
The testimony of Henry Grier, a Black man, and the next major wit-
ness for the prosecution, was therefore all-important. He was the only
person besides Heanes who claimed I had had a gun at the scene of
the shooting. Grier was a bus driver for the Alameda-Contra Costa
Transit system in Oakland. According to his testimony, he had been
driving his bus along Seventh Street shortly after 5:00 a.m. on the
morning of October 28, 1967, when he stopped his vehicle and under
its bright lights witnessed the shooting of Frey and Heanes from a
distance of about ten feet or less. Asked by Jensen to identify the gun-
man, Grier left the stand, walked over to where I sat with my at-
torneys, and put his hand on my shoulder.
When he testified for the first time, on the afternoon of August 7,
1968, a feeling of disgust for him overwhelmed me; he was obviously
a bought man who had sold out from terror of the white power struc-
ture and perhaps because the district attorney had promised him a few
handouts. My attorneys also had reason to suspect, after investigation,
that he was in some kind of trouble with his job or the law, and only
by co-operating with the district attorney's office could he get out of
his predicament. Yet, as the first trial wore on, my feelings of disgust
turned to pity. He was, after all, a brother. As a Black, I understood
that he was coerced into selling his integrity for survival, and I knew
he must have been disgusting to himself. After the first trial, I felt
Grier would not be able to live with himself, but when he came back
and did it twice again, in the second and third trials, I realized he
had been totally destroyed as a person, too corrupt even to feel shame.
He was a complete mystery to me.
It is an indication of Crier's importance to the prosecution that
Charles Garry learned of his existence only on August 1, six days before
he appeared on the witness stand. On August 1, jury selection had been
completed, and under the rules of the court, the prosecution was re-
quired to give the defense the names and addresses of all the witnesses
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it intended to call during the trial. It was on this day that Garry first
saw Grier's name and learned who he was. During the entire nine
months of preparation for the trial, Jensen had seen to it that Grier
was kept completely out of sight and never mentioned. He did not
appear before the grand jury. In all the police reports, in all the official
statements that were issued covering every detail of the incident, the
name of the most important "witness" to the shooting was withheld.
Jensen had carried out his Machiavellian tactics with supreme cunning.
Only when it was no longer possible to hide Grier did Garry learn of
his identity and that he claimed to have witnessed the incident.
At the time my lawyers received the prosecution list with Grier's
name on it, they were also given another staggering piece of evidence:
a transcript of a recorded conversation between Grier and Police In-
spector Frank McConnell, which took place at the Oakland police sta-
tion onlv ninety minutes after the shooting on October 28. The police
had brought Grier to the station house for a statement almost imme-
diately after the incident, and in it he described everything he had
allegedly seen. He also identified me as the gunman from a photograph
in the police files that Inspector McConnell showed him.
When my attorneys read Grier's statement, given to the police while
everything was still fresh in his mind, we learned why the police and
prosecution had hidden him away. If Charles Garry had had a chance
to talk to him earlier, he would have convinced Grier in a very short
time that his eyewitness account of the shooting would never stand
up in court. First of all, Grier did not make a "statement" to the police.
His interview at the police station was a classic case of verbal entrap-
ment. The inspector led Grier, who was not only weak but also in many
instances unsure of everything he had seen, and fed him the questions
that would produce answers the police wanted. Whenever Grier hesi-
tated or stopped while trying to remember what he had seen, Inspector
McConnell put words in his mouth or suggested the way things had
happened; then Grier would agree. But, serious as this was, some of
Grier's most crucial statements were so damaging to the prosecution's
case it seems incredible that Jensen was willing to gamble everything
on him as a principal witness. The fact that Grier swore I had a gun in
my hand must have affected Jensen's judgment concerning the rest of
Grier's testimony.
First, in describing the gunman whom he later identified as me,
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Grier said he was no taller than five feet; "sort of a pee-wee type you
might call him" were his exact words to Inspector McConnell. Since
I am five feet ten and a half inches, Grier's impression of my height
was wildly inaccurate. He also said I was wearing a black shirt, a light
tan jacket, and that I was clean-shaven. The police had kept all the
clothing I was wearing that night, and it was a matter of record that I
wore a black jacket, a white shirt, and had two weeks' growth of beard
(this was confirmed by a close-up photograph taken by the police
when I was lying on the gurney at Kaiser Hospital). Then, too, many
of the things Grier said in the transcript were at variance with Officer
Heanes's depiction of what took place.
Grier told Inspector McConnell that he had first come upon the
scene while driving his bus westbound on Seventh Street. As he ap-
proached Willow Avenue on Seventh, directly across from the construc-
tion site of a new post office, he said, he observed two parked police
cars and near them two policemen and two civilians standing in the
street. It was Grier's impression that the police were probably giving
the two civilians a ticket or making a routine check, and so he thought
little of it as he continued west to the end of his run. (This contradicted
the testimony of Heanes, who said that the second passenger [Mc-
Kinney] had remained in the Volkswagen until after he, Heanes, was
shot.) Grier related how he went to the end of his route, turned
around, and began his eastbound run back along Seventh Street, pick-
ing up three passengers on his way. When he got back to where the
police cars were, he said he arrived at the moment Frey and I were
walking toward one of the police cars, with Officer Heanes walking
behind us. (Heanes had testified that he stayed beside Frey's car as
we walked toward the other police car and had not accompanied us. )
At this point, Grier said, while Frey was walking beside me, I reached
into my jacket, pulled out a gun, and fired at Heanes, who was walking
behind me. Heanes fell to the ground. By this time, Grier told McCon-
nell, he had stopped the bus about thirty or forty yards away from us.
Then, he continued, Frey and I began wrestling, and he heard a second
shot. He reached for the phone in his bus to call the central dispatcher
of the transit system, and when he looked again, Frey had fallen on his
back, and I was standing over him and firing three or four more shots
at him while he lay on his back on the ground. The next thing he knew,
said Grier, I had turned and fled west, and within minutes people and
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police were arriving at the scene from every direction. He told In-
spector McConnell that he had not seen the second civilian after he
first passed the four of us on his eastbound trip. During the shooting,
the man was nowhere to be seen, according to Grier's testimony
(Heanes had testified that McKinney was standing near the curb with
his hands in the air).
As soon as Garry and my other attorneys read this transcript and
received Grier's name and address on August 1, they tried to get in
touch with him. He did not appear at work for the next six days. They
called his home over and over again, but could never reach him; a
recorded message said that the number was out of order. For six days
a constant vigil was maintained outside his home. No one was there,
and neither he nor any member of his family could be found. Grier had
simply disappeared. None of my lawyers laid eyes on Henry Grier until
he walked into the courtroom on August 7 to testify for the prosecu-
tion. On the afternoon his name had been given to the defense, Grier
had been taken into protective custody by the district attorney's office
and secretly installed in the Lake Merritt Hotel in downtown Oakland,
completely unavailable for questioning by the defense. When Grier
finally appeared, Garry had only a matter of hours to prepare his cross-
examination on the basis of prosecution testimony. However, he had
had six days to go over Grier's sworn statement to Inspector McConnell,
enough time to discredit totally Grier's statements on the witness stand,
because— unbelievably— Grier changed a lot of his earlier testimony
under questioning by Jensen.
At this point the jury had not read the transcript of Grier's sworn
statement to Inspector McConnell. And so, when Jensen put Grier on
the stand on August 7, the jurors were hearing for the first time Grier's
account of the shooting. Jensen handled his testimony verv slickly, em-
phasizing particularly that part in which Grier said I pulled a gun
from inside my shirt, shot at Heanes, and then shot and killed Frey,
standing over him and firing three or four more shots into his body.
When Grier walked over and identified me, the jury must have been
convinced of my guilt, for Grier was a calm, assured witness.
But Jensen made a crucial mistake. He thought he could get away
with the inconsistencies between Grier's statements made an hour and
a half after the shooting and what Jensen coached him to say on the
stand. He had Grier tell the jury that he was less than ten feet away
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from the participants in the shooting, whereas in his sworn statement
to McConnell, Grier had said he was thirty or forty yards away, He
told the jury in the courtroom that I had reached into my shirt for my
gun, but in his original statement, he had said I reached into the
pocket of my jacket or coat to get it. Grier testified during the trial that
Frey fell forward, face down, while he had told McConnell that Frey
fell on his back. On the stand. Grier claimed that the bus lights were
shining directly on the scene and he could see plainly, but he had told
McConnell that he could not tell how old the gunman was because he
had his head down and he "couldn't get a good look." He told Jensen
on the stand that I had fled toward the post office construction site,
but when McConnell had asked him if that was where I was headed
when he had last seen me, Grier said no, that I was running northwest,
toward a gas station.
It took only about three and a half hours of cross-examination for
Charles Garry to demolish Grier's credibility. In his examination of
him and in his final summation, Garry showed that there were at least
fifteen crucial statements in which Grier's two sworn testimonies were
in conflict. "For a while," Garry said to the jury near the end of the
trial, "I thought Mr. Grier was making an honest mistake. I really
thought that for a long time. But I've now come to the conclusion that
this man was either deliberately lying or that he is a psychopath and
that he can't be depended upon in relating any kind of facts. As far as
Huey Newton is concerned, either choice is deadly."
In his cross-examination of Grier, Garry first demonstrated that
there had been absolutely no reason for his having been taken into
protective custody. Over the strenuous objections of Jensen, who con-
stantly leaped up and called Garry's questions "incompetent, irrelevant,
and immaterial," Garry got Grier to admit that not only had the district
attorney's office never told him why he was being taken into custodv,
but also that Grier himself had always felt perfectly safe, had never
been threatened, and had never felt a need for any protection. This was
an effective beginning, because it showed the jury that the trial was
being conducted by a ruthless prosecutor who had denied the defense
lawyers their legal right to question a prospective witness.
Then Garry proceeded to develop his masterly strategy to expose
Grier's fraudulence. He had him describe all over again in the same
words the story he had told the jury for the prosecution. Garry wanted
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the jury to understand very clearly what was happening ( the jury was
still unaware of Grier's first statement to McConnell). When Grier had
finished, Garry took off. He demonstrated in one instance after another
all the discrepancies in Grier's two stories. This is how his cross-exam-
ination went at one point:
Garry: How was the civilian dressed?
Grier: Well, sir, he had on a dark jacket and a light shirt.
Garry: As a matter of fact, sir, didn't he — didn't that civilian have
on a dark shirt and a light tan jacket?
Grier: No, sir.
Garry: I want you to think about this before you answer it. I am
going to ask you again. Isn't it a fact that the person you have de-
scribed as the civilian was a person who had a dark shirt on, a black
shirt on, and a light tan jacket?
(Silence) . . .
Garry: A light tan jacket?
Grier: No, sir. It was dark.
Judge Friedman: What was the answer?
Grier: Dark.
Judge Friedman: Dark what?
Grier: The outer garment was dark.
Garry: How tall was that civilian?
Grier: From up in the coach, sir, to look down at an angle like that,
I wouldn't dare say. sir.
Garry: Isn't it a fact that that civilian was under five feet?
Grier: I do not know, sir.
Garry: Would you say that that civilian was heavy-set, thin, or
otherwise?
Grier: I didn't pay that close attention, Counselor.
Garry: Mr. Grier, you know that you are under oath, do you not?
Grier: I do, sir. I do.
Jensen: Object to that as being argumentative, Your Honor.
Garry. Mr. Grier, you made a statement to Inspector McConnell
on the twenty-eighth day of October, 1967, at the hour of 6:30 a.m.?
Grier: That's right, sir.
Garry: And in that statement didn't you tell Inspector McConnell
that the person that was involved was under five feet?
Grier: I could have, sir.
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Trial
Garry: Did you or did you not say so?
Grier: I don't recall making any specific statement, sir, as to that
fact, sir.
At this point the court adjourned for the day. Next morning, Thurs-
day, August 8, in the absence of the jury, Garry made two motions for
a mistrial. The first was based on the evidence that the prosecution had
hidden a witness from the defense. "We found out for the first time
yesterday," said Garry to Judge Friedman, "that immediately after
these documents were given to us and the list of the witnesses, that the
prosecution immediately took this man out of circulation to a point
where we did not know where he was, under the guise of so-called pro-
tective custody. He was put into the Hotel Merritt, and we didn't find
this out until he was on the stand yesterday afternoon. Our motion is
based upon the grounds that the prosecution has gone out of its way
to circumvent the right and the obligation and the duty of the defense
to prepare its case and to present it in a serious case as this one is. I
feel hamstrung, I feel tied up. And I am asking the court for relief."
Jensen immediately responded that if Garry had wanted to talk to
any witness he should have come to the district attorney's office the
following day and talked to him there.
"I have a right to see the witnesses under my own circumstances
and my own conditions. ... I spent hours and hours of investigation
time trying to locate this man, and all the time he had him under
wraps," Garry replied. Then he went on to present his second morion
for a mistrial :
"My second motion is based upon the atmosphere of the courthouse.
I feel impelled to call to the court's attention that the entire courthouse,
as you walk in through the front door, is permeated and surrounded
by deputies of the Alameda County Sheriff's Department and other
police agencies, making it embarrassing and insulting, and has, in my
opinion, a direct bearing and effect on the jury itself.
"In this particular case, under these circumstances, I feel impelled
to call to the court's attention that we don't feel we can get a fair trial
with a jury walking through these same doors with bailiffs finding out
who they are and what they are doing in the building, and this kind of
atmosphere; and for that same reason I am going to renew a motion for
mistrial."
Judge Friedman: Motion is denied. Bring the jury down.
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With that, the jury returned, and Garry resumed his cross-examina-
tion of Henry Grier.
Garry: Mr. Grier, isn't it a fact that you first saw this officer and
this civilian walking alongside of each other, as you have described it,
when your bus was at least thirty to thirty-five yards from the scene?
Grier: I did not, sir.
Garry (reading from transcript): ". . . And then I noticed as I
approached — I saw the officer walking— one guy towards the second
patrol car and this guy was short, sort of a small-built fellow. He-
just as I approached within thirty, thirty or fort)' yards of it I noticed
the man begins going into his jacket " You gave that answer to In-
spector McConnell on that hour of the morning, did you not, sir?
Grier: I did, sir.
Garry : Mr. Grier, this man was under five feet, isn't that right?
Would you answer that question either yes or no. . . .
Grier: I don't know, Counselor.
Garry (reading from transcript) : "Q. And how tall would you
say he was?
A. No more five feet.
Q. Very short?
A. Very short." -
You gave that answer, did you not. at the time?
Grier: I did.
Garry: Mr. Grier, how much did this man weigh?
Grier; I don't know.
Garry: In your estimation?
Grier: I don't know, Counselor.
Garry (reading from transcript) : "Q. About how much would
you say he weighed?
A. Oh, 125."
Did you give that answer to that question?
Grier: I could have, Counselor.
Garry: Was this fellow, this man that you saw on that morning, was
this fellow a husky fellow or a thin person, or a medium person, or
what?
Grier: Medium, I would say.
Garry: As a matter of fact, the person you have described was a
little pee-wee fellow, isn't that right?
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I
Grier: He was not, sir.
Garry (reading from transcript): "Q. Was he heavy, husky?
A. No.
Q. Slender?
A. Sort of pee-wee type fel-
low, vou might call him."
Isn't that right, that is what you said?
Grier: I could have, Counselor.
Garry: That is what you did say, isn't it, sir 2
Grier: Possibility, yes. I could have said that, yes, sir.
Garry: Not possibility; that is exactly what you did say, isn't it, sir?
Grier: As I said before. Counselor, without any mistake, I could
have.
Garry; It was the truth, wasn't it, sir?
Grier: It was, sir.
After this, and while Jensen registered his disapproval, Garry read
to the jury the entire transcript of Grier's statement to Inspector Mc-
Connell. There could be no question in the jurors' minds then that
something was suspicious, if not rotten, about the prosecution's star
witness.
Garry's most dramatic refutation of Grier's testimony — and the one
that went to the heart of the matter — came during his final summary
for the defense. He walked over to the table in the courtroom where
all the evidence for the trial was on display and picked up the black
leather jacket I had been wearing on October 28. Then he picked up
Heanes's .38 revolver and walked over to the jury box. Standing before
the jurors, he quoted Grier's original statement that I had gone into
my jacket or coat pocket and pulled out a gun. The gun that the prose-
cution claimed I had hidden, a .38 pistol, could not have been much
smaller than Heanes's revolver, Garry said, as he put the gun into the
jacket pocket. It immediately fell out. He put it into the other pocket,
and it fell out again. He tried putting the gun in the pockets several
times, and each time it fell out; the pocket was too small to hold it.
He reminded the jury again of Grier's statement. "And if this isn't a
diabolical lie," he said, "then I don't know what a lie, is. That's the rea-
son that he changed it from his coat to his shirt. Could it be doctored
in any more fashionable way? Try it. This is a shallow pocket. It's
about three and one half inches deep. That's why his testimony was
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HiwhttUmart/ Suu-itlr
changed, And it was changed with the condonation and the knowledge
of the prosecution in this case. To get a conviction."
On Monday morning, August 12, Dell Ross, accompanied by his
own lawyer, arrived at court to testify for the prosecution. At this point
Jensen needed him desperately. The first two major witnesses — Heanes
and Crier — had not been as strong as he had hoped. Ross was his last
chance. Dell Ross had testified before the grand jury in November,
1967, that right after the shooting I had jumped into his car with an-
other man and forced him at gunpoint to flee the scene. He was the
second person to claim I had had a gun in my hand. The kidnaping
charge was important, too, since it demonstrated that I knew I had
committed a crime and was using desperado tactics to escape. Ross had
told the grand jury that 1 had jumped into the back seat of his car,
and my companion had gotten into the front. At first, he said, he had
refused to drive us to the corner of Thirty-second and Chestnut as we
requested, hut when I pulled a gun on him, he complied. He testified
that I had said to him, "I just shot two dudes," and "I'd have kept shoot-
ing if my gun hadn't jammed." When a picture of me was shown to
him, Ross identified me as the man with the gun.
When Jensen put him on the stand on August 12, he had no reason
to suspect that Ross would not repeat all his grand jury testimony. Ross
answered his first few questions about where he lived, whether he had
owned a car in October, 1967, what make it was, et cetera, et cetera.
But when Jensen asked him where he had been at five o'clock on the
morning of October 28, Ross would not tell him. "I refuse to answer on
the grounds it would tend to incriminate me," he said. Jensen could
not believe his ears. He asked the court reporter to read the answer
back to him, as if to reassure himself of what he had just heard. Ross
was a prosecution witness. Moreover, he was a victim, not a defendant,
and victims do not take the Fifth Amendment. When Ross persisted
in refusing to answer, Jensen became furious. From his point of view,
Ross's insistence on not answering could damage his case seriously and
result in bad publicity. It would look as if something fishy was going
on ( which, of course, it was ) and put the district attorney's office in
an unfavorable light. He appealed to Judge Friedman, asking that the
witness be obligated to respond to his questions, pointing out that he
had already testified fully on the case before the grand jury nine months
before. At this point, the judge ordered the jury to retire from the
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courtroom. Ross's lawyer argued that Ross was making a personal
claim for his own protection under the Fifth Amendment. He pointed
out that questions put to Ross during the trial might well go beyond
the factual answers he had given to the grand jury and lead to further
questions that could incriminate him. Ross's lawyer suggested that Ross
perhaps knew more about what had happened on the morning of Octo-
ber 28 than he had told the grand jury.
Here was a dilemma for both prosecutor and judge. Judge Friedman
responded by cutting short the proceedings for that day. The next day
he granted Ross immunity and told him he could not be prosecuted for
anything that arose out of his testimony, except perjury or contempt
for failing to answer questions directed at him. Now, Ross had to an-
swer Jensen's questions and could no longer invoke the Fifth Amend-
ment. But when the prosecutor began all over again and asked the
same question Ross had refused to answer the previous day — where
he had been at 5:00 a.m. on October 28, 1967 — Ross again refused to
answer on the grounds that it would incriminate him. The judge be-
came totally exasperated and told him that he must now answer the
questions since he had immunity. Otherwise, he would go to jail for
contempt. Ross just sat there stolidly, refusing to go on. Just as Judge
Friedman was preparing to sentence him for contempt, Jensen suddenly
realized what he could do with this intransigent witness in order to
save the day for the prosecution.
"Mr. Ross," he asked him, "do you remember what happened on
the morning of October 28, 1967?" Ross stalled. Judge Friedman was
quick to interject, "If you don't remember what happened that morn-
ing," he said, "why, you should say you don't remember. The court
does not desire to force you into anything. Is it perhaps that you don't
remember what happened that morning?" Ross agreed that he couldn't
remember.
It was incredible to see the way the judge aided Jensen. What they
planned to do was clear. The judge chose to point out that a witness
cannot be punished for having a faulty memory, and so the prosecu-
tion was going to help Ross remember by reading back to him all his
grand jury testimony, which ordinarily is never allowed as evidence in
a trial. Charles Garry protested strongly, but Judge Friedman was
adamant. Jensen read all Ross's testimony back to him in front of the
jury, and it went into the official record of the trial.
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Never was Judge Friedman's bias in favor of Jensen more blatantly
obvious than in his dealings with Dell Ross as a witness. It was typical
of the arbitrary way the trial was conducted. When their man would not
testify because of self-incrimination, they gave him immunity so that
anything he said could not be used against him. Then the judge actu-
ally coaxed Ross into saying he could not remember what he had said
before the grand jury so that the prosecution had an excuse to read his
testimony into the transcript. On the other hand, when our man, Gene
McKinney, refused to testify twelve days later, because of self-incrimi-
nation, they did not offer him immunity or coax him in any way; they
just threw him into jail. The police had already exonerated McKinney
of any involvement in the incident, but they still would not offer him
immunity to protect himself. This was the only time that the contradic-
tion between justice and what the judge and prosecution were doing
came out in open court. Their people got immunity when they knew
their testimony would incriminate them. Our people, who had been
exonerated but who did not trust the system anyway, got tossed into
jail. The whole trial was nothing but a big charade to get me railroaded
into the gas chamber.
But all their chicanery to get Dell Ross's testimony came to nothing
in the end, because Charles Garry had called the last trump. Two
weeks before the trial, he had interviewed Ross in his office and taped
the conversation, during the course of which Ross admitted that he
had lied to the grand jury. He had gone along with the authorities, he
said, because they had warrants out on him for parking violations, and
he was afraid of them. Ross told Garry in this interview that I did not
have a gun that night, that I was barely conscious and had said noth-
ing at all to him. Of course, when Garry got up to cross-examine him
during the trial, Ross could not remember this interview, either, so
Garry played the whole tape in court, over Jensen's vehement objec-
tions.
As a result, the kidnaping charge against me was dropped for lack of
evidence — and I was now being tried on three counts instead of four.
Ross's appearance as a witness for the prosecution had been a com-
plete failure. Yet he was brought back for my second and third trials,
and both times he repudiated his position during the first trial. Despite
this, I felt no anger toward him. Like Grier, he was a crushed and
broken man, pathetically terrified of the power of the state. I felt more
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angry at the prosecution for using him as a dupe of the state than
against Ross, who could not defend himself.
Ross was the last important witness that Jensen produced, and after
he appeared the prosecution rested its case. In any trial the burden of
proof lies with the prosecution to establish beyond reasonable doubt
the evidence of guilt. Jensen had not achieved this. Many of his accusa-
tions were made through implication and innuendo, not facts. Despite
his single-minded determination to place me at the scene with a gun
in my hand, a lot of his evidence had backfired in ways he had not
anticipated. In addition to weaknesses in the testimony of both Grier
and Heanes — and the fact that their two stories did not jibe at crucial
points — there were a number of serious flaws and omissions in the
prosecutor's case.
Jensen never dealt satisfactorily with the shooting — for instance, the
location of the two nine-millimeter casings that were found at the scene
by police officers. Jensen had suggested throughout the trial that these
casings, which did not match police guns, belonged to the .38 revolver
I allegedly carried that night. The casings were found lying twenty to
twenty-five feet apart, one between the two police vehicles and one near
the rear left fender of Heanes's car, right where Frey was shot. Since
both Heanes's and Grier's testimony coincided in stating that Frey and
I had walked to the back of Heanes's car and that no shooting had
occurred until we reached this point, how could the second casing have
gotten twenty-five feet away? I could not have been in two places at
once. This was an insurmountable puzzle in the prosecution argument.
The only possible solution seems to be that a third person was firing at
the scene, and the prosecution had totally excluded this possibility since
it wanted only one assailant — me.
Then, too, my lawyers found the police tapes from that morning
very mystifying. They carefully went over the transcript of all the police
conversations that were recorded between the police cars at the scene
and Radio Dispatch in the police administration building. The tapes
began with a request from Officer Frey just after he had stopped me
shortly before 5:00 a.m. The request was for information about me and
the car I was driving. They continued through all the communications
that took place after other police cars arrived at the scene following
the shooting. In analyzing the messages that passed between Radio
Dispatch and the patrol car radios, my lawyers found indications that
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the police dispatcher in the administration building was sending out
information to other police in the Oakland area that was not being
radioed in by the police at the scene. This suggested that either the
tapes were tampered with or that witnesses were phoning in accounts
of the shooting and giving descriptions that the police at the scene did
not have,
For instance, the dispatcher assumed that I was connected with
the crime since Frey had asked information about me before he was
shot, and so he sent out a bulletin about 5:15 a.m. describing me as
the "suspect" and stating that I was wearing a tan jacket. Half an hour
later, he inexplicably sent out another bulletin that said I was wearing
"dark clothing." There had been no incoming police radio message on
the tape to tell him this, and no indication of how he got this informa-
tion. How did he learn that I was wearing dark clothing? Henry Grier,
too, had mentioned in his interview with Inspector McConnell a "pee-
wee" type wearing a tan jacket. Was there a third person answering
this description at the scene? Throughout the trial Jensen never allowed
this possibility to be suggested to the jury, even though the police had
interviewed witnesses who had heard the shots and arrived at the
scene seconds after the shooting. My lawyers even suspect that a num-
ber of people in the area were close and had witnessed the incident.
One woman, a Black prostitute, told the police that she had seen three
men running away in the direction of the gas station at the corner of
Seventh Street and Willow Avenue. Another witness, a young man,
told the police that he had seen two cars speeding away north on
Seventh Street. Jensen never called these people to testify because he
wanted to create the impression that I was the only person who could
possibly have killed Frey. Yet the accounts of others who were there
(and later Heanes's own admission at my third trial that there had
been a third person present) contradicted his theory.
Another piece of evidence that Jensen found hard to dismiss was
the lawbook I was carrying when Frey ordered me to the back of
Heanes's car. Charles Garry pointed out that I could not very well
have carried a gun and a lawbook in my right hand at the same time.
But even more crucial was my reason for carrying it. Reading to the
police from lawbooks was the only defense I had in case of unlawful
arrest. I had done it countless times in the past, and there are hundreds
of people in the Black community who have seen me do it and can
testify that it was my common practice, I carried it again on the mom-
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Lng of October 28 to read the law to Officer Frey. It was an action that
Jensen could not distort for his own ends.
Perhaps Jensen's most grievous and callous omission during the
entire trial was his failure to point out that a vital word in the transcript
of Grier's conversation with Inspector McConnell had been changed.
It was only by accident that Charles Garry discovered that this word
had been incorrectly transcribed by a typist in the district attorney's
office from the tape that Inspector McConnell had made with Grier.
And yet this one word was so important that it called into doubt Grier's
identification of me from the picture McConnell showed him at police
headquarters. To make matters worse, Garry discovered this error only
after the trial proper was over and the jury had been out deliberating
the verdict for a day.
On September 5, the jury requested to see the transcript, and Judge
Friedman called Garry and Jensen into his chambers to ask them for
a copy. There was no court copy (the trial clerk had forgotten to
acquire one as evidence), and Charles Garry had lent his only copy
to someone else. So Jensen went to get his and came back with the
original working copy of the transcription. As Garry quickly looked
through it, he paused in disbelief over a section of Grier's testimony.
There, over the crucial word, was a handwritten correction, completely
reversing the meaning of the sentence. This section read:
Q,: About how old?
A.: I couldn't say because I had only my lights on. I couldn't — I
DID get a clear picture, clear view of his face, but — because
he had his head kind of down facing the headlights of the
coach and I couldn't get a good look — .
Over the word "did" someone had written in the correct word: "didn't."
But throughout the trial, Jensen, knowing that this issue was crucial,
had neglected to inform Garry, the jury, and the court that there was
a question in the transcript of how clearly Grier had been able to see.
Indeed, Jensen's contention was that Grier had gotten a good look and
was therefore in a position to identify that person as me. As long as
there was the slightest doubt in his mind about whether the word was
"did" or "didn't" he had a moral obligation to inform the court and
the defense counsel, and it was an absolute matter of conscience that
he listen again to the tape to see what the word actually was. He never
bothered.
In this important matter and in all the other dubious issues — the
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position of the bullet casings, the police tapes, the hiding of Grier, the
keeping of important witnesses off the stand, the changing of Grier's
original testimony — Lowell Jensen proved less than honorable. It is
the prosecutor's job to convict a guilty man — not an innocent one.
And in mv case Jensen had many reasons to believe I was innocent. He
chose to ignore them all.
When the prosecution rested its case, Charles Garry, on the morn-
ing of August 19, moved for another mistrial. He based his motion on
the fact that it was impossible for me to receive a fair trial in Oakland
because of the atmosphere of hatred, violence, and controversy. As
proof of this, he read to the court samples of hate mail that he and I
had been receiving. One of the letters was from four retired marines
who said they had known Frey. The letter stated that neither Garry
nor I would be alive ten days after the trial was over, no matter what
the verdict. Another letter was signed "KKK" and read:
Nigger Lover:
I guess you feel that the murdering coon's gonna get off because the jury
and witnesses have all been intimidated to the extent that no one dares con-
vict. I hope he will be gunned down in the streets by some friends of the
poor policeman he killed. The Black Panthers parade all over the place and
I don't see why the KKK and American Nazi Parries couldn't do the same. It
is supposed to be a free country for everybody. It is too bad we ever stopped
lynching. At least the dam niggers knew their place in those days and didn't
cause any trouble. 1 remember reading about one time they strung up some
coons and pulled out pieces of their flesh with corkscrews. That must have
been a lot of fun. I wish I had been there to take part in the good work. I
hope this race war that we are having starts right away. We outnumber the
blacks ten to one, so we know who will win. And a lot of damn nigger lovers
will be laying right there beside them. I wish Hitler had won and then we
could have kicked off the shinnies and started in on the coons.
KKK
Garry's request for a mistrial was denied by Judge Friedman, who
refused to acknowledge that I was receiving anything but a fair trial.
He felt the letters were negligible and unimportant.
After this, Garry opened the defense and began on the morning of
August 19 to show the jury where the truth lay. He introduced a group
of witnesses who were essential to those political aspects of the case
that we had been so determined to explore from the beginning. These
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were people from the Black community— ordinary, honest working peo-
ple — who could testify with sincerity and conviction about how their
lives were frequently made difficult by the occupying army of racist
police. These people described being stopped, questioned, bullied,
pushed around, and insulted for no reason other than the sadistic whim
of some southern cracker who hated Blacks. These were the people
brutalized by intruders in their own community. All had one thing in
common: encounters with Officer John Frey.
Daniel King, sixteen, related on the stand how he had met Frey
around four o'clock one morning in West Oakland, where he was visit-
ing his sister. They had gone out to get something to eat on Seventh
Street, and there, incredibly enough, had encountered a white man
with no pants on. He was with Frey. Frey told King he was violating
curfew, and the white man accused him of knowing the girl who had
taken his pants. When King denied this, both Frey and the white man
called him "nigger," "pimp," and other "dirty words." Frey had held
King while the white man hit him. Then he put him in a paddy wagon
and took him to Juvenile Hall where he spent the rest of the night. Frey
did not even bother to call King's parents.
Luther Smith, Sr., who worked with a youth organization in Oak-
land, told of a number of run-ins with Frey. He testified that Frey was
"awful mean" and had used racial epithets when talking to him. Frey
had called Smith's brother a "little Black nigger" and his son's wife a
"Black bitch."
Belford Dunning, an employee of the Prudential Life Insurance
Company, described an encounter with Frey the day before he died.
When Frey pushed Dunning around while he was being given a ticket
by another policeman for a minor violation on his car, Dunning had
said to him, "What's the matter with you? You act like you're the
Gestapo or something." Frey's hand went to his revolver. "I am the
Gestapo," he said.
A young white schoolteacher, Bruce Byson, who had taught Frey
in high school, invited him to come back and speak to the class about
his work as a policeman. While he was talking to the high school stu-
dents, Byson testified, Frey referred to people in the Black community
as "niggers" and spoke disparagingly of them as criminals and law-
breakers.
Garry wanted the jury to understand what Black people are sub-
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jected to by cops like Frey, hung up on power. He also wanted them
to realize that Frey's bloodthirstiness was responsible for his own
death. Belford Dunning, the insurance man, had said to him the day
before he died, "Man, if you don't lick this, you are not going to last
very long around here." As a matter of fact, Frey's superiors had al-
ready decided to move him out of the Black community into another
area, where he would be less of a lethal threat to innocent human
beings. But they were too late, and Frey himself fulfilled Dunning's
prophecy. Garry stressed this aspect of Frey's behavior (and by im-
plication, most other policemen) over and over again during his de-
fense. Frey was not only a bully to helpless people; he was also de-
termined to exterminate anyone whom he considered a threat to his
own dubious masculinity. "You know." Garry said to the jury during
his summation, "since the day I got into this case, one thing has
bothered me. Why in tarnation was Officer Frey so headstrong in
stopping Hucy Newton's automobile? I wake up at night trying to find
an answer to that, and I can't find an answer. This bothers me. It is
just not part of legal due process. It is not part of any understanding
of justice. It is not part of any understanding of the proper administra-
tion of the law. Frankly, it is not the type of police action that I have
personally witnessed, but then again, I am not a Black man. I am not
a Black Panther. I am part of accepted society. I don't think any offi-
cer would stop me unless I was actually, openly, overtly violating the
law.
"What was Huey Newton doing when he was driving down Seventh
Street, between 4:50 and 5:00 o'clock in the morning, that warranted
this officer to call in and ask for PIN [Police Intelligence Network]
information, saying 'I got a Black Panther car. See if there is some-
thing on it.'
"In my opening statement I told you that there was a plan, a con-
certed plan by the Oakland Police Department, together with other
police departments in Alameda Count)', to get Huey Newton, to get the
Black Panther Party. Huey Newton above all. . . .
"Another thing that bothers me, and bothers me very, very much
about the evidence, and it should bother you when you start analyzing
it. If it is true that Officer Frey intended to arrest Huey Newton and,
in fact, said, 'I now place you under arrest,' which we contend is not
so, but let's assume for the sake of argument that he did, I don't under-
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stand why he didn't put handcuffs on him, since the Panthers are sup-
posed to be such desperadoes.
"I further don't understand, if he was placing him under arrest,
why he passed his own automobile. I don't understand why Officer
Frey took Mr. Newton to the third automobile, to the back end of it.
Why? Was he going to beat him up? You know, he could very well do
it. He was a heavier man, weighing 200 pounds. He went to the gym
regularly, according to Officer Heanes. Huey is a 165-pounder and
Huey had a lawbook in his hand."
Perhaps the most significant comment that can be made about the
testimony of these defense witnesses from the Black community is that
Jensen offered no rebuttal. His silence was eloquent. I guess no one
could be found to speak well of Frey. What can you say about a police-
man who owned three guns, carried extra ammunition on his cartridge
belt, and was the only member of the Oakland force who did not use
the regular bullets issued by the department but spent his own money
to buy a special high-velocity type?
On August 24, Charles Garry called Gene McKinney to the witness
stand. When McKinney entered the courtroom that afternoon with his
lawyer, Harold Perry, a feeling of excitement and expectation could be
felt among the spectators. Here was one of the most important wit-
nesses to the shooting of Heanes and Frey, Up until then, there had
been considerable speculation about whether even the defense law-
yers knew the name of my companion that morning. Throughout the
trial reporters and newsmen had been asking Charles Garry whether
the mysterious witness would testify.
When McKinney took the stand, Garry rose and asked him first his
name and then whether he had been a passenger in the Volkswagen
with me at the corner of Seventh and Willow on the morning of Octo-
ber 28, 1967. "Yes, I was," McKinney answered. His response electrified
the courtroom. But those two questions were the only ones he ever
answered. When Garry asked, "Now, Mr. McKinney, at the time and
place on that morning, at approximately five o'clock in the morning,
did you by chance or otherwise shoot at Officer John Frey?" McKinney
said, "I refuse to answer on the grounds it may tend to incriminate
me." Jensen was outraged. He jumped to his feet and demanded that
Judge Friedman direct the witness to answer. "Inasmuch as he has
already started to testify," said Jensen, "saying he was there at the
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scene, he has obviously waived [his right to silence]. Let's hear him
tell what he knows. He said he was there, and I ask that that question
now be read to him and the court direct him to answer."
Then followed a discussion between the prosecutor, Perry, and the
judge about McKinney's constitutional rights, with Perry claiming
McKinney need only be cross-examined on the two questions he had
chosen to respond to — -his name and where he was on October 28. Be-
yond that, Perry claimed, he was entirely within his rights to claim the
Fifth Amendment. When Jensen insisted on cross-examining him, Mc-
Kinney refused to answer. Here Garry was trying to raise the question
of "reasonable doubt" — doubt about whether there could have been
only one possible person who did the shooting — me, as the prosecution
claimed.
But Garry and Harold Perry were also using another brilliant strat-
egy, and Jensen understood immediately what was involved. The
prosecution believed that McKinney was inviting Judge Friedman to
grant him immunity in his testimony — the same immunity he had given
to Dell Ross — whereby nothing he said could be used against him.
Then, with this protection, he could say that he had killed Frey and
shot at Hranes, and that he had escaped with me, Because no evidence
had been submitted during the trial to prove otherwise, he could not
have been convicted of perjury. Thus, having absolved me of the crime
and having freed himself of any danger of prosecution, since his testi-
mony could not be used against him, both of us could have walked
out of the courtroom — at liberty.
But Jensen and Friedman, believing this to be the strategy, were
having none of it. After questioning McKinney carefully to make sure
he realized he was liable for contempt, Judge Friedman ordered him
immediately sent to jail for refusing to testify. He later sentenced him
to six months, but the California Superior Court reversed the decision,
stating that McKinney had acted within his constitutional rights. After
spending a few weeks in the county jail, McKinney was released on
bail. As I said, he is a courageous man.
Finally, on the morning of August 22, I took the witness stand. A
number of people had doubted I would testify because they thought
I would not be able to handle a merciless cross-examination by Jensen.
But actually I looked forward to it. For six weeks I had sat beside
Charles Garry in the courtroom and listened to Jensen claim that I had
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murdered Frey in cold blood. I had watched him try to sell the jury
on the fact that I loved violence, that I had a history of provoking
policemen, and that there was reason to believe I did not tell the
truth. I wanted to set the record straight and prove to the jury that I
was innocent. I also was determined to let him know what it meant
to be a Black man in America and why it had been necessary to form
an organization like the Black Panther Party. After that, I hoped they
would understand why Frey had illegally stopped my car on the morn-
ing of October 28.
Garry opened up by asking me the two all-important questions:
whether I had killed Officer John Frey and whether I had shot and
wounded Officer Herbert Heanes. I gave the only possible answers—
the truth. No, I had not. After that, we went through the necessary
background leading up to the incident, which in this case began the
dav I was born. I told the court about my family, about growing up
in Oakland, where there was no place to play except in the rubble
and garbage-strewn streets and vacant lots, because Black kids have
no swimming pools, no parks, no playgrounds. I told them about de-
grading experiences in the public school system, experiences that count-
less thousands of other Black children have endured and continued to
endure in an oppressive and indifferent world. I told them how the
Black community is occupied by police who need no excuse to harass
and bully its inhabitants. I told them that when I graduated from
Oakland Technical High School I was unable to read or write and that
most of mv classmates were in the same boat, because no one in the
school system cared whether we learned to read or write. Then I told
how, under the influence of my brother Melvin, I had taught myself
to read by going again and again through Plato's Republic. I tried to
explain what a deep impression Plato's allegory of the cave had made on
me and how the prisoners in that cave were a symbol of the Black man's
predicament in this country. It was a seminal experience in my life, I
explained, for it had started me thinking and reading and trying to find
a way to liberate Black people. Then I told of meeting Bobby Seale
at Oakland City College and how the Black Panther Party grew out
of our talks.
Garry led me through an exposition of what the Black Panther Party-
stood for and an explication of its ten-point program. I recited the ten
points in the courtroom and explained them. Blacks, I said, are a col-
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onized people used only for the benefit and profit of the power struc-
ture whenever it suits their purposes. After the Civil War, Blacks were
kicked off plantations and had nowhere to go. For nearly one hundred
vears they were either unemployed or used for the most menial tasks,
because industry preferred to use the labor of more acceptable immi-
grants—the Irish, the Italians, and the Jews. However, when World
War II started, Blacks were again employed — in factories and by in-
dustry — because, with the white male population off fighting, there
was a labor shortage. But when that war ended, Blacks were once again
kicked off "the plantation" and left stranded with no place to go in an
industrial society. Growing up in the late forties, I was aware of it in
Oakland, because major defense plants had been built there during the
war, and a large Black population was condemned to unemployment
after the war. I quoted the second point in our program as a way of
changing all this: "We want full employment for our people. We be-
lieve that the Federal Government is responsible and obligated to give
every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the
white American businessman will not give full employment, then the
means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed
in the community so that the people of the community can organize
and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living."
Sometimes, while I was explaining Black history and the aims of
the Black Panther Party to the court, I forgot that I was on trial for
my life. The subjects were so real and important to me that I would get
lost in what I was saying. There were moments when I even enjoyed
myself, especially when I had a chance to score points against Judge
Friedman and Jensen.
On one occasion I saw an opportunity to show my contempt for the
judge, and I took it. I was describing how some immigrant groups had
been subjected to oppression and discrimination when they first arrived
in this country, but that after they began to make economic gains some
of them had joined their oppressors, even when the oppressors con-
tinued to discriminate against the immigrants' own people. I used as an
example Jews who join the Elks Club, even though they know that
this organization is racist and anti-Semitic. Judge Friedman had been
the first Jew admitted to the Elks Club in Oakland, a fact that had
been given a great deal of publicity. The Elks wanted it believed that
they were no longer anti-Semitic, but everybody knew better.
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Trial
Another time, talking about contemporary racism in American so-
ciety, I deliberately used the Mormon church as one of the most blatant
proponents of ethnic discrimination, Knowing that Jensen was a Mor-
mon, I looked at him when I said this, instead of at the jury. He gave
me a smirk, and I kept right on looking at him. He could say nothing
in front of the jury lest they learn the truth about him.
Jensen often became impatient with the way Garry was conducting
his examination of me and frequently interrupted, but even he some-
times seemed interested in what I was saying. Throughout, however,
those meaningful glances passed between Jensen and Judge Friedman,
the judge asking for an objection and Jensen giving it to him. Fried-
man could hardly hide his disapproval of everything I was saying and
kept telling me to stick to the present and the incident itself. Then
Garry would remind him that everything I said was relevant to the
defense. Somehow, we managed to get in all the most important
political aspects of the case, and that was what mattered most. Only
when that was accomplished did I turn to my version of what had hap-
pened that morning. I described it exactly as it took place up until Frey
shot me. After that, of course, I had passed out, so I could describe only
those things I remembered and my hazy impressions of them,
I had spent nearly the entire day on the stand when Garry turned
me over to the enemy. For the first time in eight weeks Jensen and I
were face to face.
My sister Leola had told me of an incident that occurred at the
beginning of the trial when she was standing on the courthouse steps
watching one of the many demonstrations. Jensen, not knowing who
she was, was standing near her, watching with an associate. She heard
Jensen tell his friend that he meant to make me lose my temper before
the jury. Then, he said, all the demonstrations on my behalf would be
meaningless. So, when he approached me that afternoon, I knew what
to expect: he wanted me to explode rather than engage in a good de-
bating session. I felt that the whole exchange would be nothing more
than another debate, only this time the stakes were high. I had spent
too much time on corners, in bars, and in the classroom debating very
complex subjects to get upset with Jensen's probing. He was a worthy
opponent, but I knew that once he began to push me, he was go-
ing to be surprised at my responses. He had a false impression of me
and expected me to respond in a way I was incapable of doing.
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Throughout almost two days of cross-examination, we struggled to see
whose approach would prevail, mine or his, and I felt that during al-
most all of this time I controlled the situation. In responding to Jensen,
just as I had responded to Garry, I did not pull any punches about
criticizing the system or its agents. Though my life was at stake, I
wanted to show my contempt. I sought to use their own apparatus to
defy them, which was consistent with the revolutionary practices I
have attempted to live by.
Jensen's entire cross-examination, nearly every incident he brought
up, was intended to demonstrate that I loved violence and guns and
that I was a personal threat and a menace to police officers merely try-
ing to do their duty. He began by asking about our early patrols in
the Oakland community, emphasizing for the benefit of the jury, in
insidious ways, the fact that we had carried shotguns. He tried to imply
that I would have preferred to carry a concealed pistol on these patrols
but that the terms of my probation did not allow this. He reinforced this
suggestion bv having me read a poem, "Guns, Bab}', Guns," I had once
written for The Black Panther newspaper, which was filled with sym-
bols and metaphors that have a particular meaning for Black people
but are utterly lost on most whites. In the poem I had mentioned a
P-38 revolver, and Jensen tried to suggest that this was the type of
gun I had shot Frev with and that my poem suggested I liked this gun
and would use it if the occasion demanded.
"What is a P-38?" he asked.
"It's an automatic pistol," I answered.
"Does it fire nine-millimeter Luger cartridges?" was his next ques-
tion.
I explained to Jensen that I don't know much about hand guns. I
always preferred a shotgun and would never touch hand guns while I
was on probation. I explained to him that in this matter, as in all others,
Black Panthers obey the law.
At that, he asked me if I remembered an incident in Richmond in
1967 when I had not obeyed the law, when, as he put it, I "got into a
combat with Richmond police"? He was referring to the time the
police had lain in wait for us until 5:00 a.m. outside a house where we
were partying. I had taken an arrest that time in order to avoid combat
after one young police officer had stepped on all the brothers' feet and
another got me in a choke hold against a police car. I carefully ex-
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plained the details to Jensen and the jury and told how an all-white
conservative jury at my trial in Richmond had believed the police ver-
sion of what had taken place, as they always do, and sentenced me to
sixty days on the county farm. I made sure the jury learned about the
policeman's remark after viciously beating the brother: "I have to go
now because I promised to take my wife and kids to church at nine."
Then Jensen brought up the time the Black Panthers had responded
to the little boy who ran into headquarters asking for help. The police
had burst into his house when his father was away and were tearing
up the place on some phony pretext of looking for a shotgun. We asked
the police to leave because they had no search warrant, and in their
rage they had arrested me for wearing a dagger in a holster, accusing
me of "displaying a weapon in a rude and threatening fashion."
While describing this incident, I really got the best of Jensen. He
had been on my right when he first asked the question, and the jury
on my left. He wanted me to speak toward him, but I turned my back
and began giving details of the incident to the jury, which took a while.
Since he had asked the question about the incident, he could not in-
terrupt mv answer without looking stupid, so I seized the time and took
the play away from him.
The jury seemed fascinated with my description of the affair and
was with me all the way. Jensen obviously got so disgusted with what
was happening that he left his position near the clerk's desk and sat
down looking very dejected— as I was later told, At any rate, I de-
scribed the incident fully, leaned back, and turned to my right for Jen-
sen's next question; he was no longer there. I was surprised at not see-
ing him where he had last been standing, so I said, "Where is he?"
Then I saw him seated at the table, and I smiled at him and said, "Oh,
there you are. I thought you had gone home." The courtroom broke
up at this, and the judge admonished me.
Much of Jensen's cross-examination had continual reference to
official reports and documents, which he kept consulting while I was on
the stand. Reading a report that is filed in some record system and
stamped with an official seal of approval can be very impressive: the
printed page somehow suggests that whatever is described represents
the truth, that it faithfully describes what took place. And so, when
Jensen brought up official police testimony of what had happened to
me in the past — in arrests, in courts, in various trials — he thought he
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was offering the jury proof of my violent and crime-filled past. But,
far from distressing or embarrassing me, every one of his challenges
presented a chance to tell the jury what had really taken place and to
describe them in the larger context of what life is like for Black people
in this country. In this way, I was able to demonstrate how the police
had harassed the Black Panthers and looked for every opportunity they
could to arrest us and destroy our organization.
To give Jensen credit, he did not miss very much. But I countered
every piece of "official" evidence with an explanation that went beyond
words on a page. And I think the jury came to understand that no
official document ever contains the whole truth. Events are dictated by
a number of mitigating circumstances and a whole system of values and
customs that can never be conveyed in print.
Jensen made another mistake by examining some of my speeches
and writings and reading into them exhortations to violence. On this
tack lie quickly got out of his depth; he did not understand the way
language is used among Blacks and often took literally what was meant
symbolically. Every time he brought up something I had written or said
that he thought sounded dangerous, I patiently explained what it meant
in terms of organizing the Black communitv. In this way, I was able
to describe to the jury the goals the Party had for Black people. I had
hoped to do this — to take the initiative from Jensen and develop certain
political points in the courtroom. It was surprising how often I suc-
ceeded.
Finally, Jensen got around to the morning of October 28. He came
meticulously prepared, armed with photographs and maps, to present
his version of what had happened. Leading me carefully through the
whole incident, he had me describe mv everv move and gesture. At one
point I was even asked to demonstrate with him how Frey had
"smeared" me. He also chose to bring up an encounter that Bobby Seale
and I had had with two policemen in 1966, because he believed the
event related to the shooting of Officer Frey. As Jensen described this
incident, I had gotten into a fight with a policeman and had tried to
take his gun away from him. If Jensen had been able to prove this, he
could have used it as a foreshadowing of what had happened in 1967
and as evidence that I had done the same thing with Frey. I do not
know where he got his information, but I pointed out to the court that
it was on record that one of the policemen who was hassling us in 1966
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had admitted in court that he was drunk when he met Bobby and me.
Jensen said, "Mr. Newton, isn't it a fact that you entered a plea of
guilty to battery upon that police officer, the man in uniform?" I an-
swered, "I accepted the deal that the district attorney's department of-
fered."
"I see. And you pled guilty to a battery on a policeman?"
"I think it was simple assault."
(Sarcastically) "Is that right? Mr. Newton, did you see anyone
shoot John Frey?"
"No."
"Did you see anyone shoot Officer Heanes?"
"No. I did not."
"You have no explanation at all of how John Frey was killed?"
"None whatsoever."
"I have no further questions."
With that, Jensen's cross-examination was completed. It had not
gone according to his plan. I had never lost my cool. It was Jensen, in
fact, who lost his.
Garry was masterful in his closing arguments. A defense lawyer has
to be good at that point, because the prosecution gives the closing
argument firsthand then has the last word after the defense has spoken.
Garry reviewed the evidence, showing the holes and the discrepancies
in the prosecution testimony. He had brought a number of large posters
into court with Grier's conflicting testimony lined up side by side, and
with a pointer he painstakingly indicated all the contradictions in
Grier's two sworn statements. The whole thrust of Garry's summing up
was to illustrate how much of a "reasonable doubt" there was in the
evidence presented by the prosecution.
But Garry did more than this. In a moving and heartfelt closing
speech he addressed himself to the conscience of the jury and to their
understanding of social conditions that had led to the death of Officer
Frey.
"The Black community today, the Black ghetto, is fighting for the
right of survival. The white community is sitting smug and saying,
Let's have more police! Let's have more guns! Let's arm ourselves
against the Blacksl
"That is not the answer. If you think that is the answer, we are all
destroyed. If you think that Mayor Daley has the answer, we are all de-
237
Revnlutioiuiri/ Suiridc
stroyed. If you think that this nation with all of its power and all
of its strength can eliminate violence on the street with more violence,
they have another thought coming.
"My client and his party are not for destruction; they want to build.
They want a better America for Black people. They want the police out
of their neighborhoods. They want them off their streets. Every one of
you here possibly knows a policeman in your neighborhood. I know
several men in police departments. I think they are wonderful people.
I live in Daly City; I have a beautiful relationship with them. Those
police live in my neighborhood, within three or four blocks. I know
where one of them lives. I can call on him if I need him. But no police
officer lives in the ghetto. Why don't they live in the ghetto? Because
a man that is making eight or nine or ten thousand dollars isn't going
to live in the kind of hovel that the ghetto is.
"Has anybody thought of uplifting the ghetto? So that it doesn't exist
in the manner that it has? These arc the things that Huev Newton and
the 111 ack Panthers and other people are trying to do. .
"White America. listen! White America, listen! The answer is not
to put Hue)- Newton in the gas chamber. It is not the answer to put
Huey Xewton and his organization into jail. The answer is to wipe out
the ghetto, the conditions of the ghetto, so that Black brothers and sis-
ters can live with dignity, so that they can walk down the street with
dignity."
The fire and eloquence of Charles Garry's final argument are dif-
ficult to describe; he was pleading for the principles and beliefs he feels
most deeply about and to which he has dedicated his entire life. When
he stood and spoke out for justice and truth and tolerance, he was not
simply defending a man whose life was in jeopardy; he was speaking for
all the downtrodden and oppressed in the world, and he was asking
the jury to think about them also. Few people in the courtroom that
day were unaffected by what he said.
In contrast, Jensen devoted most of his closing arguments to the
particulars of the trial. He asked the jury to find me guilty of murdering
John Frey and defended in detail the testimony of Grier and Heanes.
Yet at a point in Jensen's summation in which he discussed the mean-
ing of law and the process of justice the words could verv well have
been spoken by Garry. It was what my lawyers and I had been fight-
ing for. But I feel sure Jensen had no idea of the irony in his remarks;
238
Trial
"We put together in the courtroom the notion that every right that
goes to every citizen is implemented in our courts. I think that is so.
And I think you should reflect on this; the notion that society accords
a right to an individual has something that goes along with it, and
that is that there is no such thing as a right without a duty that goes
along with it. That is, if the law says a man has a right, the law also
says that every other person must honor that right. He has a duty to
honor that right.
"What is more fundamental, ladies and gentlemen, than the right to
life? What is more fundamental than the right to a peaceful occupa-
tion and life?
"What we do in a courtroom is to seek out and declare a truth. We
must, as I say, declare those truths in a courtroom. If we cannot de-
clare those truths in a courtroom we are lost.
"And in a courtroom, just as there must be a duty to implement
a right, a courtroom must exist on the basis of the declaration of
truth."
With Jensen's final declaration that I was a murderer, the arguments
were finished. The struggle between defense and prosecution was over,
and the judge began to instruct the jury about what they must do to
reach a verdict. "The function of the jury," said Judge Friedman, "is
to determine the issues of fact that are presented by the allegations of
the indictment filed in this court and the defendant's plea of not guilty.
This duty you should perform uninfluenced by pity for a defendant or
by passion or prejudice against him. You must not suffer yourselves to
be biased against a defendant because of the fact that he had been ar-
rested for these offenses, or because an indictment has been filed against
him, or because he has been brought before this court to stand trial.
None of these facts is evidence of his guilt, and you are not permitted
to infer or speculate from any or all of them that he is more likely to
be guilty than innocent."
As the jury filed out, led by David Harper, I felt everything was
over for me. Some jurors had been impressed with my testimony and
believed in me. I had watched them throughout the trial and felt they
were sympathetic to the defense, but I had no hope of their stead-
fastness under the pressure of jury deliberations. Often, in such cir-
cumstances, people will appear to lean one way but change their minds
when conflicting opinions bear down on them. So I went back to my
239
Revolutionnnj SmV/i/r
cell prepared for a decision that would send me to the gas chamber.
My work had prepared me well; organizing defense groups in the
community had continually made rne aware that I could be killed at any-
time, and I knew that when serious actions begin to go down against
you. you must be ready. If you wait to prepare for death when the gas
chamber is facing you, it is too late. It is the difference between having
your raft ready when high tide comes or trying to make it after the
waves are there. When death is staring you in the face, the heavy things
take over.
The jury deliberated for four days — from September 5 until Sep-
tember 8 — and despite the fact that my lawyers were with me con-
stantly, the time passed very slowly. Nonetheless, I was in good spirits.
My thoughts kept me occupied. I re-examined everything that I had
done before and during the trial and found nothing to regret, nothing
I had to square myself with. Our activities as Black Panthers had been
worth all the trouble and pain we had seen, and there was no reason
lo feel we were losing everything. If I had had a chance to start again,
nothing would have been any different.
I contemplated the gas chamber. Only two thoughts concerned me:
how the last minute would be and how it would affect my family. First
of all, I resolved to face it with dignitv right to the end. Second, I wor-
ried about my family having to live through yet another ordeal. The
whole experience had been terrible for them. Yet I knew that if neces-
sary I would do it again, even though it meant more suffering for them.
I felt great love for them and valued their support. If I had caused them
anguish, I was sustained by the knowledge that one day the people
would have the victory, and that this would bring some measure of
satisfaction to those I loved.
Many people wondered what the Black Panthers would do when
the verdict came down. The brothers had repeatedly said that the sky
was the limit if the oppressor did not free me. At the time that was
said, we meant that an unfavorable decision would be taken to the
highest judicial level. But the statement was intentionally ambiguous
and open to interpretation in order to put the whole Oakland power
structure up tight. That plan certainly worked. An open interpretation
not only attracted considerable publicity but also left us free to make
specific decisions about action after the verdict was in, rather than
before.
240
Trial
It was in the early evening of September 5, the first day of the
jury's deliberations, that we were notified that the jury was returning to
the courtroom. At first we thought they had reached a verdict, but no,
they wanted to have Crier's statement to McConnell read to them again,
and they also asked if they could see my bullet wound. When everyone
was assembled, I went over to the jury box, lifted up my sweater to
show the scar in my abdomen, and then turned around to show the exit
wound. (Later, we found out that a disagreement had arisen among
the jury members over the location of the wound. If Heanes's testimony
were true [he testified that he was in a kneeling position and I was in
a standing position], the wound near my navel would be lower than
the exit wound in my back. But, if Frey had stood and shot me while
I was in a kneeling position, the navel wound would be higher than the
rear exit wound. I had testified that Frey had shot me as I fell to my
knees. My demonstration supported my testimony.)
It was also during the jury's first day of deliberations that Garry
found the mistake in Grier's testimony left uncorrected by Jensen.
The jury had asked to see the transcript again, but when Garry dis-
covered the error, he refused to allow the uncorrected copy to be sent
in. Judge Friedman commented that he did not think the error made
much difference, But Garry knew better. It was a vital correction as
far as the defense was concerned, a mistake so serious that it could mean
a new trial. Garry insisted that he and Jensen listen to the original tape,
find out whether the word really was "didn't" — and send the correction
in to the jury. Jensen at first claimed that his office did not have the
proper machine to play the original tape. That evening one of my law-
yers listened to a dub of the original on his own machine and swore the
word was "didn't." Jensen did not listen to the tape until the next morn-
ing. It was a tense period for all of us, since the jury could have come in
with a verdict at any moment. On Friday, September 5, my attorneys
played the original tape in the press room for reporters and representa-
tives of the media. Most of them thought the word was "didn't," and
the news on television, radio, and in the press that day carried stories
about this new discovery. Meanwhile, mv attorneys went to an audio
engineer who worked for a radio station in Oakland. He agreed to
transfer the crucial part of Grier's testimony to another tape and then
blow it up on his own hi-fi equipment so that they could hear the cor-
rect word distinctly, and once and for all. When this was done, the
241
Revolutionary Suicide
word Grier actually had said — "didn't" — came through loud and clear.
Meanwhile, the defense was working frantically against time, pre-
paring a motion to reopen the case and trying to get the proper equip-
ment into court to play the blown-up tape for Judge Friedman and
Jensen. It was a real hassle, but in the end, over the vigorous objections
of Jensen, who claimed it was too late and that Garry should have
done this during the trial, the judge did listen to the blown-up tape
and had to recognize that the word was "didn't." A corrected statement
was sent in to the jury late Saturday afternoon, but Friedman would
not allow any mention of the original error to accompany the tran-
script. We never learned whether the jury even noticed it, let alone
understood how important and significant a correction it was.
Finally, on the fourth day of deliberations, September 8, around
ten o'clock in the evening, the jury reached a verdict. I came back into
the courtroom with my lawyers to hear it read by the clerk:
"Verdict of the jury. We, the jury in the above entitled cause, find
the above named defendant Huey P. Newton guilty of a felony, to wit,
voluntary manslaughter, a violation of Section 192, Subdivision 1 of the
Penal Code of the State of California, a lesser and included offense
within the offense charged in the first count of the Indictment. David B.
Harper, Foreman.
"The next verdict, with the title of the Court and cause the same:
We, the jury in the above entided cause, find the above named de-
fendant Huey P. Newton not guilty of a felony, to wit, assault with a
deadly weapon upon a police officer, a violation of Section 245B of the
Penal Code of the State of California as charged in the second count
of the Indictment. David B. Harper, Foreman.
"The following verdict, with the title of Court and cause the same:
We, the jury in the above entided cause, find that the charge of pre-
vious conviction as set forth in the Indictment is true. David B. Harper,
Foreman."
Manslaughter, not murder. That was a surprise. But Garry and I
were unhappy with such an equivocal decision. It meant the jury be-
lieved I had killed Officer Frey, but only after severe provocation, and
in a state of passion. It was absurd, however, that they did not think
I had also shot Officer Heanes. Did the jury think someone else had
shot him, and if so, who, and how did the two shootings connect? The
verdict was a compromise that showed no justice at all, for there was
242
Trial
clearly a reasonable doubt about my guilt in the minds of some jurors,
although they failed to bring about my exoneration. All these questions
began to surface when I realized that although I would have to go to
jail, I had escaped the gas chamber. Some people thought the verdict
was better than a hung jury and a mistrial; the state could not try me
again for first-degree murder. But I disagreed with them.
The verdict caused a lot of dissatisfaction in the Black community.
Some people were particularly angry at David Harper, the jury fore-
man, who, to them, had sold out in typical Uncle Tom fashion. I did not
think so. To counteract this opinion, I sent out a message to the com-
munity shortly after I had a chance to analyze the verdict. This, in part,
was my statement:
The question has been asked: What do I think of the verdict of the jury?
I think the verdict reflected the racism that exists here in America, and that
all Black people are subjected to. Some specific things I would like to say
about certain people on the jury: first, Brother Harper and other members of
the jurv who believed in my innocence owed an obligation to me and the
Black community to adhere to their convictions that I was not guilty. I am
sure that they, the people on the jury who agreed with Brother Harper (a
strong man and also jury foreman), were in the minority. I believe that
Brother Harper was interested in doing the best thing for my welfare. I think
that the verdict was a compromise verdict; a compromise between a first-
degree murder and an acquittal or not guilty. Why did Brother Harper com-
promise? He compromised because he truly believed that it was in my best
interest. Mr. Harper made his decision based on the assumption that if a
hung jury resulted, I would be tried in the next trial by an all-white jury
and possibly convicted of first-degree murder. I believe that he based his
action or his decision upon the fact that he saw how racist the majority of
the jury was acting, and their whole attitude toward the case. I believe that
there were few people joining Brother Harper and his just conclusion that I
was innocent, and that I am innocent, but he did compromise. Because
Harper failed to persuade the jury, or he felt that he could not persuade
them or show them the truth or the fact that I was innocent, he thought that
he would then give the lowest possible sentence. He might have considered
that I had been in jail for the last ten months and that I might be in jail for
another ten months awaiting a new trial and then stand the possibility of
having the first-degree murder conviction stand, simply because of the rac-
ism that exists here in America. These are all my speculations, and I will tell
you why I speculate on these things later on while I have this conversation
with you.
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Revolutionary Suicide
Brother Harper, like many people, believes that on a manslaughter
charge, you would spend maybe two vears or three years at the most in the
state penitentiary, and further, that due to the fact that I have already been
in jai.1 for one year, that while waiting trial another year as a result of a hung
jury, I would already serve that time and even more. So, therefore, because
he couldn't get an acquittal, he then chose to compromise and get the lowest
sentence. The only problem with that, though, is that in a political case, the
defendant is subject to do the maximum length of time. The sentence on a
manslaughter charge with a prior felony conviction is from two to fifteen
years. But I don't believe that Brother Harper had any idea of what he was
doing, so, therefore, I want to ask the Black community sincerely and
Brother Harper's son to forgive not only him, but also the other people who
believed in my innocence, and who were compromising because they did
not know what they were doing. I believe that they thought they were doing
the best thing in my interest, and the best thing in the interest of the Black
community, under the racist circumstances wherein which they had to op-
cialr. . . .
Kveii though he was unknowingly operating against it, he felt that he
wil .n'lirig in tlii' capacity of one who loves the community. Therefore, I am
.iskini; the community that in the event that he teaches at Oakland City Col-
fegs iwxt semester, that he be given all respect due to a Black man because
he did not know what he was compromising to. . . .
I am very sure . . . that we will get a new trial not because of the kind-
ness that the appellate courts will show us, but because of the political pres-
sure that we have applied to the establishment, and we will do this by
organizing the community so that they can display their will. The will of the
Black people must be done, and I would like to compliment the people on
the revolutionary fervor that they have shown thus far. They have been very
beautiful, and they have exceeded my expectations. Let us go on outdoing
ourselves; a revolutionary man always transcends himself or otherwise he is
not a revolutionary man, so we always do what we ask of ourselves or more
than what we know we can do. . . . At this time I would like to admonish
my revolutionary brothers and sisters to use restraint and that we would not
show violent eruption at this time for the reason that the establishment
would like to see violence occur in the community in order to have an excuse
to send in 2,000 or 8,000 troops. The mayor has already stated that he
would be very happy if something were to happen in the community while
the establishment is in a favorable situation. They would like to wipe the
community out. ... It is up to the VANGUARD PARTY to protect the
community and teach the community to protect itself, and therefore at this
time we should admonish the community to use restraint and not to open
ourselves for destruction.
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Trial
I cautioned restraint to the people because I knew the police were
eager for a chance to kill Black people indiscriminately. They had been
waiting a long time for this day, and an angry eruption by the commu-
nity would have given them the excuse they needed. The community
responded to my request and stayed cool. Any spontaneous and unor-
ganized outburst would have caused great suffering. With everything
quiet the night after the decision came down, the police felt cheated;
they wanted some action, and that meant killing Blacks.
Unable to find any provocation, two drunken colleagues of Frey
created one. They drove in their police cars to our office on Grove
Street and fired a shattering volley of bullets into the front window.
Then they went to the corner, turned around, and came back, shooting
into the office again. By this time, some citizens had called police
headquarters, and the two policemen were apprehended.
Fortunately for us, the office was purposely empty, and no one in
the streets or the buildings nearby was hit by the bullets. But if
Black Panthers had been in the office, the police probably would have
claimed that we had fired on them first, and then tried to wipe us out.
This time, however, they could not hide their treachery behind their
usual lie— "justifiable homicide." The true nature of their crime — an
unprovoked and unjustified attack on our office — had been exposed
before the community. The two policemen were eventually dismissed
from the force, but they were never brought to trial for breaking the
law.
But the incident should also help make it clear to doubters that I
was in fact innocent. Just as Frey's two colleagues felt free to go in
search of Black people to kill, so, too, did Frey in the early morning
hours of October 28, 1967. There are many who do not believe that a
police officer, without provocation or danger, would draw his sendee
revolver and fire upon a citizen. But that morning Frey had murder on
his mind.
Charles Garry summed it all up when he told the jury that the
Black community is in constant danger from the violence of the police:
"I wonder how many people are going to die before we recognize
the brotherhood of man. I wonder how many more people are going to
die before the police departments of our nation, the mayors of our
nation, the leaders of our nation recognize that you can't have a society
that is 66 per cent white racist ignoring the role of the Black man, the
brown man, the red man, and the yellow man, . . .
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Revolutionary Suicide
"Officer Frey bothers me. His death bothers me, and the things that
caused his death bother me. I can see this young man going through
high school, varsity football, basketball, and all the other things that
young men do, in good physical condition. Joining the police depart-
ment and without proper orientation, without proper attitudes and
without proper psychological training and all the other training which
is necessary to being a policeman. Being thrown into the ghetto. In a
year's time he becomes a rank and outright racist to such a point that
when he comes to class to talk about his success as a police officer, the
schoolteacher has to cringe and grimace to let him know that the use
of the word 'nigger' was not appropriate.
"I just wonder how many more Officer Freys there are. His death
bothers me, but Huey Newton is not responsible for his death."
246
27
In my case I worked hard from sunup until sundown trying
to make a living for my family an it ended up to mean
death for me. . . . You take big people as the president
governors judge their children will never have to suffer.
. . . The penitentiary all over the United States are full of
people ho was pore tried to work and have something
couldnt dos that maid them steel and rob. They were look-
ing for money they were. While they are in prison for life
thats what happens to the poor people.
From the dying statement of Odell Waller, a laborer,
written before his execution in Virginia, 1940
The Penal Colony
After my conviction and sentencing I was sent once more to the
Alameda County Jail until a hearing could be held to decide my fate — I
would either be released on bail pending an appeal to the higher
courts or sent away to serve the two-to-fifteen-year sentence. The hear-
ing was held early in October and bail was denied. Immediately after,
I was ordered into the custody of the California Correctional Authority
for confinement. At this point I became aware of a curious power I
held over the prison authorities. They were worried about the role I
might play as a political prisoner, and orders had come down for special
treatment.
After a hearing, a prisoner is usually taken back to his cell, where
he changes from civilian clothes to prison dress before a bus trip to the
prison of his confinement. But when my bail hearing ended, I was
hustled to the elevator in my civilian clothes and then downstairs to a
247
Revolutionary Sulfide
car waiting in the basement. It was as if thev had known all along
that my bail request would be denied. In the basement I found all my
property from the cell packed and ready to go. Then handcuffs went on,
and a chain around my waist attached to the shackles around my ankles,
and I was considered secure enough to make the trip. The sheriff's
car, escorted by six others, sped through a tunnel to the exit. Only then
did a deputy turn back toward me, speaking through the grille, to say
where we were going — Vacaville Medical Facility, a detention center,
where prisoners spend sixty to ninety days being tested, classified, and
assigned to various penitentiaries. The ride took about fortv-five min-
utes, and when we got to Vacaville, officials were waiting for us out-
side the building; the whole place was surrounded bv guards holding
shotguns.
At Vacaville I went through a ritual familiar to ever)- inmate — the
skin scare}). From that time forward, through my years in jail, I was
never .illowed to go from one building to another without this demean-
ing exereiSt I took off all my clothes. Then they looked into mv cars
and nose, nibbed their hands through my hair, made me cough to
prove there was nothing in my mouth; then I spread the cheeks of
in)' buttocks while they searched mv anus. After that, I was finger-
printed, given prison clothes, and assigned a number that I was to
keep for the duration of my time in the penitentiary system. Giving a
prisoner a number is another way of undermining his identity, one
more step in the dehumanization process, Of course, it has historical
roots: the SS assigned numbers to prisoners in Nazi concentration
camps during World War II.
All my civilian clothes except socks and underwear were sent home
to my family. Socks and underwear are habitually thrown awav in
prisons. I was curious about this and asked them why, particularly since
my shorts were new and had been worn only once; I pointed out to
them that they were in better shape than the rest of my clothing. No
one knew why; it was simply the rule, the tradition, that a prisoner
could send all clothing home except socks and underwear, "We just
follow the rules." I did not mind their throwing the shorts away, but
I did resent not being given an explanation. This is a small point, but
it demonstrates the mentality that exists on everv level of prison ad-
ministration. The administrators and guards who run prisons are like
George Orwell's brutes in 1984 who are chosen as policemen on the
248
The Penal Colony
basis of ignorance, physical strength, and their predisposition to follow
orders without question, however stupid or brutal.
Next, I was assigned to an isolation cell, but before the lock-up I
went to see the warden. This is another special privilege. I always have
a chat with the warden right away. He lectured me against any attempt
to organize; if that happened, he said, I would be placed in an isolation
cell. It struck me as ironic that even as he spoke an isolation cell stood
waiting to receive me. Tactics like this add to the nightmarish un-
reality of prison. Then the warden began dangling the carrot: if I co-
operated, I could be like any other prisoner, not locked up all the time.
They were going to treat me tight at first, he said, to educate and
orient the other prisoners to my presence, but if all went well, they
would let me out into the general prison population — the "main line,"
it's called. I sat silent, listening; I would never taste that carrot.
Prison systems are fond of tests, all kinds, psychological, I.Q., ap-
titude. During my stay at Vacaville I was interviewed several times by-
two or three psvehiatrists who ran a battery of aptitude and I.Q. tests
on me. I scored low on the I.Q. tests, about the third or fourth grade;
I don't know about scores on the others. Puzzled over these low scores
in view of mv good grades in college, the psychiatrists asked me about
it. I explained to them that I refused to relate to these tests because
they are routinely used as weapons against Black people in particular
and minority groups and poor people generally. The tests are based on
white middle-class standards, and when we score low on them, the
results are used to justify the prejudice that we are inferior and unin-
telligent. Since we are taught to believe that the tests are infallible,
they have become a self-fulfilling prophecy that cuts off our initiative
and brainwashes us.
I told the psychiatrists that if they really wanted to know my I.Q.
thev ought to examine my background and the work I had done in many
areas, including creative disciplines like music. This seemed perfectly-
logical and obvious to me, but the psychiatrists either could not under-
stand or preferred to remain ignorant. Their approach was so me-
chanical, so lacking insight, that they appeared unintelligent to me;
they refused to see that it is more important to judge a person by his
accomplishments than by some abstract tests that may or ma)- not cor-
relate to the facts of his life. It has been my experience in prison that
psychiatrists are among the most rigid and inflexible members of the
249
(
Revolutionary Suicide
staff, They are programmed and computerized like robots and cannot
approach inmates as human beings. With their tests and questionnaires
they seem to have a preconceived idea of what an "adjusted" human
being is. Any deviation from this mold is a threat to them.
During this testing, the authorities puzzled over where to put me.
There was much speculation in the prison about that, and through the
grapevine I heard that they had some trouble deciding. They wanted,
above all, an isolated prison, but because of the public attention my case
had received, they also wanted one that would be viewed in a favorable
light, a kind of showplace for visitors. That way they could keep up the
charade that penitentiaries are rehabilitation centers rather than con-
centration camps.
The administration at Vacaville even went through the motions of
asking my preference, although they had not the slightest intention of
allowing me to choose. I gave San Quentin as my first preference, with
f'lils'oin and Soledad next in order. These three afforded relatively easy
COrnmuniralion with the outside. As far as I am concerned, all prisons
,uv miKTiitration camps. One is little better or worse than another. My
pivlcrcnci's were strictly based on the possibility of contact. San Quen-
tin is close to home, only a thirty-minute drive from Oakland, and even
I'.'ss from San Francisco; there my family and attornevs would be
able to visit me fairly easily. I also had friends in San Quentin who
could keep me in touch with my attorneys, my family, and with the
media. Folsom came second for pretty much the same reasons: it was
only about eighty miles from the Bay Area, I knew some people there,
and the commuting would not be too bad for my family. Soledad was
the farthest away of the three prisons — approximately 165 miles south
of Oakland on Highway 101— and therefore the least desirable.
As it turned out, I did not go to any of them. I was taken by surprise
when, after only twenty-five days at Vacaville— I was expecting to stay
the usual sixty—I received a slip saying I would be leaving within
twenty-four hours for the California Men's Colony, East Facility, in
San Luis Obispo. This time I traveled on a bus with other prisoners.
Not that the prison officials had stopped treating me in a special way.
For every prison bus a list is prepared of the prisoners who will be
taking it and where they will be going. The bus I rode had everybody's
name on the transportation list but mine. It came from Folsom, picked
us up, and went on to San Quentin and then to another jail in San
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The. renal ('olom/
Jose. From San Jose we went to Soledad, where I spent (he night in
isolation. Brother George Jackson was near, but I never saw him. The
friendly inmates on the bus gave me a rundown on the situation at the
Penal Colony, so I was somewhat prepared when we arrived.
Although called a Men's Colony by the authorities, San Luis Obispo
inmates know it as the California Penal Colony, which sums up what it
is all about — a penal institution and a colonized situation. The state
believes in the power of euphemism, that by putting a pleasant name
on a concentration camp they can change its objective characteristics.
Prisons are referred to as "correctional facilities" or "men's colonies,"
and so forth; to the name givers, prisoners become "clients," as if the
state of California were some vast advertising agency. But we who are
prisoners know the truth; we call them penitentiaries and jails and re-
fer to ourselves as convicts and inmates. This does not mean that we
accept these labels as bad, only that we refuse to be deceived by the
state's duplicity.
The California Penal Colony stands approximately halfway between
Oakland and Los Angeles, about 250 miles from each, and getting there
involves a major trip from both cities. In addition to its remoteness, it
is not typical of California prisons. Fewer than 10 per cent of the
inmates are Black or Chicano, even though those two groups make up
more than 50 per cent of the prison population in California. Since there
have been no riots, the institution has ^reputation as a model prison.
The authorities like to claim a happy inmate population. Yet, once in-
side it, the reasons for its calm reputation are easy to understand. The
Penal Colony is divided into four self-contained quadrants, each with
approximately six hundred inmates. Its layout and organization make it
almost impossible for an inmate in one section to meet the three-
quarters of the population in other quadrants. In addition, and very im-
portant, 80 per cent of the prisoners were homosexual, and homosexuals
are docile and subservient; they tend to obey prison regulations.
I did not know one person at the Penal Colony when I arrived.
Eventually, I met other prisoners and tried to reach them, but I found
it hard to politicize men who lived largely for the next sexual encounter.
To them, sex was all.
These men were exploited and controlled by the guards and the
system. Their sexuality was perverted into a pseudosexuality that was
used to control and undermine their normal yearnings for dignity and
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Revolutionary Suicide
freedom. The system was the pusher in this case, and the prisoners
were forced to become addicted to sex. Love and vulnerability and
tenderness were distorted into functions of power, competition, and
control.
Homosexual love at the Penal Colony was routinely simple. Each
inmate, except me, had a key to let himself in and out of his cell dur-
ing the day. A date would be made at mealtime or in the shower and
a "point man" stationed outside in the hall to warn of approaching
guards. This last step was unnecessary. The guards were content to
look the other way as long as things stayed cool. Only political action
brought quick, repressive steps. The guards would simply threaten to
put the political offender on a bus and send him away from his lover.
These threats always worked. As a matter of fact, many guards were
themselves homosexuals, Often, as I showered, a guard would stand
in the doorway, talking, looking not at my face but at my penis, and
say, "Hoy, Newton, how you doin' there, Newton? Wanna have some
Inn, Newton?" I laughed at them.
The reign of homosexual life in prison has changed somewhat with
the introduction of conjugal visits. Liberals see this as a step forward,
but it is not. The same coercion and control are there, even more so,
because guards can deny a man his woman just as they denied a man
his man; but the inmate cannot easily find another woman. This is
prison, where every desire is used against you.
Procedurally, the Penal Colony was Vacaville all over again. First I
was taken to the warden, who told me that they would allow me to
stay on the main line if I went along with all the rules and did not at-
tempt to organize. He was also against complaints; if I wanted to com-
plain, I ought to wait until I got out of prison. Again, I said nothing. I
expected to be there for fifteen years. That is enough time to achieve
a purpose.
After my meeting with the warden I was assigned to a counselor,
who proposed that I go through a "rehabilitation program" to prepare
me to return to society. I felt no need to be rehabilitated; my only crime
was to speak in defense of the people. But the counselor went on de-
scribing the program. As the first step in my rehabilitation, he explained,
I was to work in the prison dining hall at no salary. Eventually I would
be able to move into a job in one of the various prison industries, where
the salaries ranged from a minimum of three cents an hour to a maxi-
mum of ten cents an hour.
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The Venal Colony
I absolutely refused to engage in such' exploitation, working at first
for no salarv and then for wages so low they could not be considered
as salary at all. Instead, I oEered a counterproposal. I would work will-
inglv but only for a just compensation— union-scale wages. If they paid
me union wages, and paid the same wages to all inmates, I would then
be willing to work in any kind of job they chose. Further, I would also
pay the cost of my room and board so that I would not be an expense
to the state, even though it had put me there illegitimately. The staff,
predictably, refused to consider this proposal.
I then offered another alternative— that my rehabilitation program
consist of attending school in the prison. Even though I had completed
an education beyond the level offered there, I knew that an educational
program would permit me free use of the library to go on developing
my knowledge. They refused this, too, on the ground that the education
programs were a privilege and that I had to earn them by first working
in prison industry for an unspecified period of time. In other words,
first the stick— a dehumanization that satisfied them— and then the
carrot— pursuit of my own interests. I refused again. Their demands
were rooted in a lie anyway. I knew that other prisoners had been per-
mitted to start out with educational programs, and I also knew
they would not allow me to do so because they wanted to break me.
But I was not going to be broken.
So they placed me on lock-up. This means that I remained in my
cell for most of the day and received no canteen privileges. The cells
at the California Penal' Colony each have three locks. One is centrally-
controlled and is in operation only at night. It goes on after the general
lock-up with a loud clack that can be heard all over the prison. We
call it "dropping the bar." The second lock is opened only by the guard's
key, and the third lock by a key that the inmate possesses. Each morn-
ing,' after "raising the bar" (taking off the centrally controlled lock),
the guard went by and unlocked each cell; the inmate was then free
for the rest of the' day to leave or enter his cell with his own key. Be-
cause I was on lock-up, the guard passed my cell by when he came
down the row in the morning. I was permitted out of my cell only for
meals, for visitors, or for official prison business such as going before
the disciplinary board. So I got out each day only from seven to eight
for breakfast, twelve to one for lunch, and five to six-thirty for supper.
During those times I also had to change my clothes, take a shower,
and do any other necessary tasks.
253
Revolutionary Suicide
In lock-up one is denied all privileges. I could make no purchases
from the canteen, no cigarettes, soap, deodorant, tooth paste, and
mouthwash. I had only a state toothbrush and institutional tooth
powder. Each week I received six pieces of paper on which to write
letters to any of the ten people on my visiting list. Although I received
the San Francisco Chronicle in the mail, always one day late, even this
was refused from time to time. At first I was permitted to have no
other reading material or to do any other writing, but eventually my
attorneys obtained a court order entitling me to a typewriter as well as
books and writing material related to my case. I continued to exercise
and practice control of my thoughts, which I had perfected by then.
Lock-up was their way of "punishing" me for refusing to accept
slavery. The shops at the Penal Colony make shoes and license plates,
and do the laundry of other institutions; for these services the Penal
Colony is paid good rates. It follows that by paying almost no salary to
inmates, the system is little more than slavery. Prison is one of the most
outrageous forms of economic exploitation in existence, although prison
authorities see the system in a different light. I looked upon lock-up
not as punishment but as liberation from servitude. Once a month I was
called before the disciplinary board and asked if I was ready to co-
operate with them and come off lock-up. Every month I refused.
The guards thought I was fighting a losing battle, that I would not
be able to stand it for long. I would eventually break, they said, so why
waste away in solitary? Moreover, by resisting prison rules and regula-
tions, I was simply extending my time to the full fifteen years.
The isolation of lock-up was bearable, really more than that. My
brain was active; there were many things to think about, and I filled
the days working out ideas I had begun to develop back in Oakland
City College. Furthermore, my family was able to visit me often, despite
the long drive. Rules allowed visitors every day of the week except
Tuesday and Wednesday, which were designated as nonvisiting days.
If my attorneys wanted to see me, they deliberately came on a non-
visiting day, and my family worked out a schedule whereby I had a
visit on three or four other days; so between family, lawyers, and friends
I was quite often in the visiting area from nine in the morning until
four in the afternoon.
My family sustained me. I needed their warmth and the news they
brought from the outside. Except for mealtimes, I was not permitted
254
The Penal Colony
to talk with other prisoners, and the San Francisco Chronicle is a
limited source of information. Rehabilitation never offered mental
health, just the reverse. It involved communication only with the staff,
who are not worth any contact at all. To listen to their philosophy or
accept their outlook will destroy you.
One piece of tragic news reached me in bits and pieces. Early in
1969 — January — when I had been in prison for about four months, two
worthy Los Angeles comrades, John Huggins and Alprentice "Bunchy"
Carter, were assassinated on the UCLA campus by members of Ron
Karenga's organization, US. I had first met Karenga when I was in-
volved in the Afro-American Association at Oakland City College. He
later went to Los Angeles to establish his own cultural nationalist
group, which was, for a while, quite successful, largely because the Los
Angeles Police Department supported him in many of his ventures.
Mayor Yorty even used the group as a show of progressivism. US was
in fact an agency to keep the Black community under control; courses
in Swahili and a kind of cultist philosophy were offered. Advertised as
a program to free Blacks, Karenga's US in fact exploited them.
The Black Panthers were a real threat to Karenga's game. Karenga
was afraid of the Party because we were not cultists but grass-roots
organizers, and we had begun to attract people that he wanted in his
organization. However, he had the support of Los Angeles' power struc-
ture, which he supported, even to the extent of all but endorsing Mayor
Samuel Yorty over his Black opponent, William Bradley, in the 1969
primary for mayor.
Our serious problems with Karenga had begun in February, 1968,
while I was in the Alameda County Jail awaiting trial and the Party
was organizing rallies in Oakland and Los Angeles to raise funds for
my legal defense. In an effort to unite with as many groups as possible
and create a solid front, we had organized the Los Angeles rally
through the Black Congress, a coalition of Black groups in the area.
Karenga's group was a part of the Black Congress.
The Oakland rally took place on February 17, my birthday. Stokely
Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, City Councilman Ron Dellums, Charles
Garry, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, and others participated. It was
a successful event. The Los Angeles rally was scheduled for the Sports
Arena the next day, with many of the same people on the platform
plus several leaders of organizations in the Black Congress. When the
255
l\i:volutim\nr\j pruritic
planning party for the Black Panthers arrived shortly before the rally,
they found that Karenga had co-opted the event, particularlv by having
the Los Angeles Police Department provide security. Cops were every-
where, inside and out. The Central Committee called Karenga imme-
diatelv and told him that the Black Panthers were not coming into that
auditorium unless the police left. A lot of Black people had come down
from the Bay Area, and if something went wrong and thev found out
why the Black Panthers refused to show up, Karenga would have lost
even more of his credibility. So he persuaded the police to leave the
building, and the rally came off successfully.
We had agreed that a portion of the money contributed would go
to members of the Black Congress to cover their expenses, and the
rest to my defense fund, but when it was all over, despite several calls
to Karenga to discuss the funds, the Black Panthers never got any-
thing in Los Angeles for my defense — the reason people had come in
Mm' first place— and the Black Congress was jived, too.
Less than a year later. Bunchy and John were killed at a meeting of
Ihe UCLA Black Students Union on the Los Angeles campus. The
meeting was held to discuss the appointment of a director for the Black
Studies program at UCLA. Karenga had been trying to run the whole
show, and a number of Black Panthers, including Bunchy and John—
who were in the program— went to the meeting to offer some opposi-
tion. A group of Karenga's followers were there. When the Black
Panthers were having lunch in the student cafeteria, Karenga's men
sneaked up on Bunchy and John and assassinated them.
When news of this reached me in prison, I realized that all Black
Panthers were marked men. The assassinations had started with the
murder of Little Bobby Mutton by the Oakland police. When the
Chicago police killed Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, many people
throughout the country began to suspect that there was a national
police conspiracy to wipe us out, and each new attack on the brothers
confirmed this suspicion. This homicidal campaign caused my spirits
to sink. It is very difficult to take the loss of valuable comrades and
personal friends, even though we recognize death as a price we have
to pay in a revolutionary struggle. You never get used to it.
Some of the comrades in the Party sent messages asking me to let
them go after Karenga, but I refused to do this. Open warfare between
us would only harm the community, whose needs came before our
desire for revenge. In time I knew the community would deal with
256
The Penal Colony
Karenga, and eventually it did: a community tribunal was held in Los
Angeles, and it found him guilty of deceiving the people. He had to
leave Los Angeles and move his operation to San Diego. Now his
group has faded from the scene. Two of his followers were sentenced
to life imprisonment for the murder of Bunchy and John.
Soon after this, a man named Robert Hall came from Los Angeles
to see me. I do not know how he got in; only ten people were per-
mitted to visit me, and Hall was not on my list. Neither was he one of
my attorneys. Furthermore, he came on a nonvisitmg day. After the
guard came to my cell and told me I had a visitor, I tried to figure out
all the way to the visiting room who would be coming to see me on a
day when visitors were not allowed. I was not expecting any of my
lawvers. When I got there, I was surprised to see a complete stranger.
He told me he had come to see if there was anything he could do to
end the friction between Karenga and the Black Panthers. He wanted
to bring about a truce, he said. I did not trust him— he must have had
official approval to be there— and I told him that if Karenga wanted
a truce all he had to do was stop killing Black Panthers; we had never
attacked anv of his men. It was a short visit because I had nothing more
to say, and I have never seen Hall again.
After I had been on lock-up for six months, the guards began to
look for cracks, signs of submission; bets were made about when it
would happen. I ignored the probing, which puzzled them even more.
A guard approached me one day and said, "Most guys go nuts after a
few weeks in solitary, and you've already gone six months. What is it?
Don't you feel any sort of tension?" Others began to show concern for
my mental and physical health. When this started, I knew I had mas-
tered them the way I had mastered the soul breaker.
To express my contempt for their system I wrote an article called
"Prison Where Is Thv Victory?," smuggled it out with visitors, and had
it printed in the Black Panther newspaper. At the time, I still was not
permitted writing material — this was before the court order — but I
managed to write the essay and see that it reached the Party, In the
article I taunted the guards for thinking that because a man's body is
in prison they have won a victory over the ideas that inspired his ac-
tions. My purpose was to show contempt for my captors and also to
encourage the courageous comrades who were continuing the struggle.
I was very pleased when the article was published and the guards got
the message.
257
Reuolutionan/ Suifiili
Now, the prison administration changed tactics. Convinced at last
that I would not bow down, thev began to tell the other prisoners that
the only reason for mv perseverance was a mistaken belief that my
conviction would be reversed by a higher court. In other words, they
said only hope sustained me, and without this hope to cling to, I would
collapse. But I had no more faith in the higher courts than I had in the
lower courts, and I was prepared to stav in isolation for the entire
fifteen years. This was something they consistently failed to understand.
Very few people in America have any deep perception of conditions
and treatment in prisons for an obvious reason: the authorities, who
have total control of the situation, see to it that the public is not told
the truth. Prisoners cannot communicate freely and privately with the
outside. Therefore, what most people know about prisons is what the
authorities want them to hear. Millions of people were surprised and
shocked by the assassination of Comrade George Jackson and the
massacre at Attica because they do not understand how oppressive
even the best prisons are.
I have often pondered the similarity between prison experience and
the slave experience of Black people. Both systems involve exploitation:
the slave received no compensation for the wealth he produced, and the
prisoner is expected to produce marketable goods for what amounts
to no compensation. Slavery and prison life share a complete lack of
freedom of movement. The power of those in authority is total, and
they expect deference from those under their domination. Just as in the
days of slavery, constant surveillance and observation are part of prison
experience, and if inmates develop meaningful and revolutionary
friendships among themselves, these ties are broken by institutional
transfers, just as the slavemaster broke up families. In my own expe-
rience, a number of inmates who refused to follow orders and stav
away from me during mealtimes were transferred for "institutional
convenience." It is generally recognized that a system of slavery is de-
grading for the master and slave alike. This applies to prison, too. The
atmosphere of fear has a distorting effect on the lives of everyone there
— -from commissioners and superintendents to prisoners in solitary con-
finement. Nowhere is this more evident than among "correctional offi-
cers," as the guards are euphemistically called.
Prison guards are pathetic figures. I had very little contact with
them because I stayed in my cell so much, but they harassed me every
chance they got. When I went out to see visitors, they searched my cell,
258
The Penal Colonij
sometimes senselessly tearing it up, throwing my washcloth on the
floor, dumping my toothbrush in the toilet, and creating a general dis-
order. If they ever found items from the canteen, such as deodorant or
hair oil, they would write me up for having "contraband" in my cell, a
violation of prison regulations. They took great pleasure in these petty
harassments, and after a time I developed a wry attitude, seeing it for
what it was— the childish behavior of small men.
Once I got a "beef" and went to the hole. I went without a struggle.
Since I was already in isolation, being in the hole meant only that I
ate my meals in my cell instead of the prison dining room. It was the
easiest solitary confinement I ever pulled because I was allowed to
have reading material there. Most of the books were old and juvenile —
Rin-Tin-Tin, Hopalong Cassidy, and the like — but I also got hold of
the Bible, which I love, and which I read through again, for the third
time. Unlike the soul breaker, my cell contained a bunk, toilet, wash-
basin, chair, and tin desk.
The guards never gave up their effort to keep me in a constant state
of rage, but I recognized their limitations and avoided their assaults,
either by refusing to communicate with them or not doing what they
wanted.
Obviously the guards are victims, too, but the fact that they have a
limited and very crude kind of power tends to corrupt and brutalize
them. Some of them perceive dimly how blighted their lives are and
try to compensate in pathetic ways. For instance, when the student dis-
turbances broke out at the University of California at Santa Barbara in
the spring of 1970, the Penal Colony dispatched members of the "goon
squad" to assist in putting down the rebellion. When the guards re-
turned, they were full of tales about how they had jailed professors
and smart rich kids. This made them feel important, bigger than real
life, and when they were not talking about revolutionaries as if they
were dogs, they boasted about the fine motels they had stayed in while
beating up members of the university community and the opulent meals
they had eaten in "Sambo's" restaurant. In lives so empty and bereft
of meaning, events like this were highlights.
One of the evils the guards were guilty of was promoting racial
animosity in prison, using it to divide us. Many white inmates are not
outright racists when they get to prison, but the staff soon turns them
in that direction. While the guards do not want racial hostility to erupt
into violence between inmates, they do want hostility kept high enough
259
Rrvnlutionun/ Suiiidi'
to prevent any miily, This i.s something like the strategy used by south-
em politicians to pit poor whites against poor Blacks. Unfortunately,
many Black inmates, caught up in this madness for reasons of sheer
survival, are goaded by the guards into turning against the white in-
mates, or the "Nazis," as they call themselves. In this situation the
guards arc the oppressors, and the "Nazis" are the tools of that oppres-
sion. Most degrading, the whites are not only duped and used by the
prison staff, but come to love their oppressors. Their dehumanization
is so thorough that they admire and identify with those who deprive
them of their humanity. This kind of psychological aberration was so
frequent in Nazi concentration camps that its rationale has been a
major intellectual question for thirty years. One theory is that the
prisoners were reduced to such a state of infantile dependence upon
their keepers that they were acting out a kind of grotesque child-parent
situation with them, believing that identification with their oppressors
was (heir only hope of survival. A prison situation of this sort is both
tragic and explosive.
K.icial hostility, however, is only one reason for inmate resentment
and rebellion. Most Blacks are now more aware of the political than
the criminal nature of their incarceration. The)' have learned to see
themselves as political prisoners in the classic, colonial sense: they were
not tried before juries of their peers or a cross-section of the community,
but by juries wholly unfamiliar with any aspect of their lives. Many
activities defined by the ruling class as criminal are the acts of poor
and exploited people, desperate people, who have no access to the
channels of opportunity. And the juries deciding their fate are made
up of privileged middle- and upper-class citizens who are threatened
by the fact that a man who is shut out of the privileged structure can
create his own opportunities. The jury is incompetent to judge the
accused; it does not understand the circumstances that brought on his
actions. Jurors in America are not peers; they are a part of the system
of oppression. As a result, the poor end up in penitentiaries as political
prisoners. They have every reason to feel bitter, especially when it is
plain to see how leniently these juries handle accused persons of their
own class, if indeed they are ever brought to trial.
There is a process of self-enlightenment that operates among in-
mates, a process that moves far beyond the level desired by the author-
ities. A "rehabilitated" prisoner may see the "incorrect" nature of his
past actions. He may even see that the assault or robbery, or whatever,
260
The Penal Colony
was a "mistake." But he comes to see that "mistake" in a particular
light. Many prisoners reach this point and fly past it to a deeper and
broader assessment. They begin to assess society and see that their
"crimes" were in part a result of a capitalist and exploitative society.
Frequently, they become socialists, recognizing that capitalism has
given birth to the murderous twins: imperialism and racism. These en-
lightened and politically conscious prisoners arrive at convictions that
the authorities find unacceptable and threatening. Even though inmates
at this point may have no intention of ever committing crimes again,
they are held in prison for a longer time because of their new opinions
rather than because of their prior activities. When they appear before
parole boards, they are questioned not about the past but about their
views of contemporary social issues. If they are honest and tell the
truth, thev are denied parole. They were sent to prison for what they
did, but they are kept in prison for what they believe. These are politi-
cal prisoners. George Jackson and Booker T. Lewis are two well-known
examples, among thousands less visible.
Another type of political prisoner is the one who has committed no
crime at all, but who holds political attitudes and beliefs that threaten
the privileged status of the ruling circle in the United States. Among
them are many gallant warriors of the Black Panther Party who want
justice for all men and an end to the oppression of the lumpenprole-
tariat. They are given long sentences on flimsy charges. Such injustices
are clear ly deliberate attempts to strangle the freedom struggles of
peace-loving people.
I was such a political prisoner, but this did not discourage me
during my twenty-two months in the Penal Colony; I knew that a
political consciousness was growing among people both in and out of
prison. I could see it when I talked with other inmates at mealtimes;
we got into heavy raps about the situation in this country. It was
obvious in the growing movement outside the prison — among students,
welfare recipients, hospital employees, and community workers, to
name only a few. This confidence lay behind my ability to withstand
the oppression. They could lock up my body but not my spirit; that
was with the people. The spirit of revolution will continue to grow
within the prisons. I look forward to the time when all inmates will
offer greater resistance by refusing to work as I did. Such a simple move
would bring the machinery of the penal system to a halt.
Though the guards eventually realized that I would never break
261
[{evolutionary Suicide
under their harassment, other members of the prison staff could not
accept my resistance. They kept probing for weaknesses. In the spring
of 1970, prior to my first parole hearing, I was summoned to the prison
psychiatrist for an evaluation. From the minute I entered his office I
made my position clear. I told him that I had no faith or confidence
in psychiatric tests because they were not designed to relate to the
culture of poor and oppressed people. I was willing to talk with him,
I said, but I would not submit to any testing. As we talked, he started
running games on me. For instance, in the midst of our conversation
he would try to sneak in psychological questions such as "Do you feel
people are persecuting you?" Each time he did this I told him I would
not submit to any sort of testing, and if he persisted I was going to
leave the room. The psychiatrist insisted that I had a bias against
psychological testing. He was correct. In response to this I showed him
Haws in the psychological systems of Freud, Jung, Skinner, and others
that made these systems inapplicable to Black people. When he asked
me whether there was any psychological system that I could trust, I
lolil him I accepted the theories of Frantz Fanon. He had never heard
of him, so I suggested some books by Fanon that he could read, and
left.
Their psychological warfare got them nowhere. My counselor, a
man named Topper, held a preboard hearing with me and tried to get
me to come off lock-up; I refused. Topper had told me earlier that he
was glad I was on lock-up and he wanted me to stay there, but in the
preboard hearing he switched his tactics and strongly hinted that if I
came off lock-up I would almost certainly be given a parole date by
the board. I knew this was not true. He probably reasoned that if I
came off lock-up and the board did not give me a parole date then I
would lose status in the eyes of the other inmates. This was very im-
portant to the prison, because it would undermine my position. On the
other hand, they could work out their strategy from another angle. I
could have been given a date if I remained on lock-up. Then they
could say that a date for my release had been established but they
would not be able to honor it because I refused to co-operate with
them. This would make the public think that I was blocking my own
release. They were trying to steal my only weapon against them — my
dignity.
I knew from other sources that Deputy Superintendent McCarthy
262
I'hr I'nuil l 'olanij
had told people that he thought my demand for a minimum wagi- in
prison was reasonable. Yet neither he nor Topper had tin' QOUf> to
state their feelings publicly. Like so many other administrators they
went along with the system. It just took too much courage to take a
stand for prisoners' rights. They were unimaginative, mediocre, and
fearful men. It was no coincidence that they had chosen to work in
prisons; they blended right in with the grey dullness and impersonality
of institutional life.
I finally went before the parole board in April, 1970, and even
though I did not expect anything from them I looked forward to the
chance for debate and the opportunity to show my contempt for their
system. Seven or eight board members sat with me around a table,
talking casually and drinking coffee. One of the first things they asked
me about were the violation reports in my folder, which said I had
contraband in my cell. I asked them if they knew what the nature of
the contraband was, and it turned out they had not looked closely-
enough to see. When they read the violation reports in full, they were
surprised to find that the so-called contraband was soap, deodorant, and
toilet articles from the canteen, which had been passed on to me by
other inmates. I told them I refused to do without certain basic ameni-
ties and that I would continue to obtain them. They ordered the guards
to allow toilet articles in my cell. This was a small but sweet victory.
Then we got into the heavy things — the reasons for my refusal to
work, et cetera. I was ready for them. But when I gave my explanation,
they replied that I wanted to pick and choose the rules I would obey
and that this was a very arbitrary attitude. I responded by expressing
a total lack of faith in the penal system and the parole board and let
them know that I did not expect parole then or any other time. I told
them I was willing to obey rules I disagreed with, but I would never
obey rules that denied my dignity as a human being. Furthermore, I
urged them to disobey those rules that violated their integrity and
dignity. One of the board members, a Negro, was so shocked that he
expressed doubt about my sanity. This is a good example of the men-
tality controlling prisons across the land, one so narrow that it regards
human dignity and strength of character as abnormal.
After that hearing I resolved never to go before a parole hearing
again, even though my attorneys advised against this decision.
The prisons definitely need to be transformed, but this cannot be
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Revolutionary Suicide
accomplished in a vacuum or by random incidents. Prisons are an in-
tegral part of a complex whole that can be defined as the American
institutional superstructure of the world. I say the world because the
United States is an empire, not a nation, and the way prisoners and
minorities are treated here has a definite relation to the way the
American power structure treats people around the world. The world
must become a place in which poor and oppressed people can live in
peace and with dignity. If we still need prisons after that transforma-
tion, they must be true rehabilitation centers rather than concentration
camps. In the new society the centers would not be called prisons or
penal institutions and they would not be ancient rock fortresses in in-
accessible areas. They would be an important part of the community,
in which people who are not well or who are unhappy would still be
made to feel that they are part of humanity. Most of the men in prison
have been made to feel superfluous from birth. James Baldwin has
pointed out that the United States does not know what to do with its
Black population now that they "are no longer a source of wealth, are
no longer to be bought and sold and bred, like cattle." This country
especially does not know what to do with its young Black men. "It is
not at all accidental," he says, "that the jails and the army and the
needle claim so many. . . ."
Many now recognize that most of the people in prisons do not be-
long there. When they can be motivated to believe that they have
something to offer society, something desperately needed, which only
they can contribute, then there will be no need for prisons. But each
man must first be convinced of his own value and uniqueness, and that
this uniqueness is his, and his only, to give to others. That is what true
rehabilitation means.
All the time I was at San Luis Obispo, Charles Garry and his staff
were working to appeal my conviction before the California Court of
Appeals. Their proceeding was based on a number of improper maneu-
vers that had been used by the prosecution in their determination to
convict me. Among them were: the grand jury, as well as the trial jury,
was illegally tainted with racism; my previous conviction of felony
should have been struck; the evidence for a first-degree murder con-
viction was not sufficient; the prosecution suppressed material evidence,
and the trial judge failed to reopen the trial when it was discovered;
the trial judge contributed to the highly charged atmosphere and made
264
The Venal Colony
many prejudicial rulings; the judge had failed to give the jury an im-
portant instruction. My attorneys followed the appeal process closely
and kept me advised of every step, but I took little notice, having no
faith in the court system. They had kept me in jail without bail for
almost a year while awaiting trial. Then, after the conviction, they
denied me bail pending an appeal. Even when we appealed the deci-
sion denying bail, we were given no consideration. I could find no
reason to hope that the state would reverse my conviction. As far as I
was concerned, I would pull fifteen years in the penitentiary, and pull
it in isolation.
Fa) 1 Stender, who had worked with Charles Garry on my defense,
sent word in May of 1970 that a decision would be issued shortly; she
did not know what it would be, of course, but apparently the court
had written a very long opinion. Usually, in the case of a public figure,
a long opinion means a denial because the court wants to show the
public that they have given careful consideration to every point of
view. So Fay sent word to expect a denial. Another attorney, Alex
Hoffmann, held the opposite view. He argued with Fay that a long
opinion could mean a reversal; the court might want to show very
carefully that the reversal was based on legal technicalities rather than
upon the weight of public opinion — which in my case was felt by the
courts and the correctional system. I sided with Fay and gave the
appeal no more attention. I had other things to concentrate on.
And so, when the reversal of my conviction by the California Appel-
late Court was announced on Friday, May 29, it came as a complete
surprise. I had spent the day in the visiting room, hearing nothing, and
about four-thirty I was on my way back to my cell when a prisoner
stopped me and said that he had heard on his radio that my conviction
had been reversed. I did not believe him, and he could scarcely believe
it himself, so I asked him to recheck. When I got back to the quad, the
guard in charge of my tier got red-faced when he saw me. He said
nothing, just turned the color of fresh-cooked lobster and fumbled with
his key while locking me in my cell. Only then did I begin to suspect
that something good had happened.
Outside in the yard, beneath my window, I heard a great commo-
tion; a group of prisoners were gathered there, throwing up rocks and
clapping hands. They were so happy and excited that I began to feel
optimistic, too. Prisoners are not allowed to congregate in groups of
265
Revohiiioniirij Suicide,
more, than two in the prison yard, but these men were defying the rule.
When the guards approached them, the inmates took their identifica-
tion cards and threw them on the ground in violation of a regulation
that requires inmates to surrender their identification cards to guards
on demand. After they had thrown them in the dirt, they stood their
ground without moving; the guards kept at a distance and did not
advance.
The prison officials were upset by the reversal and angry at the
inmates for demonstrating in my support. They tried everything they
could think of to dampen the enthusiasm that spread throughout the
jail, but their efforts were unsuccessful. The only mention of my reversal
ever made to me by prison officials was the question of how I could
possiblv be released before the new trial since bail was rumored to be
set at 8200,000.
The reversal by the Appellate Court was based on Judge Friedman's
incomplete instructions to the jury. He had told the jury that I could
be found tniiltv of murder in the first degree, murder in the second
dcgreo, manslaughter, or I could be found not guilty. But he neglected
to tell the jury that there were two possibilities within the manslaugh-
ter eategorv: voluntarv or involuntary. Voluntary would mean that the
jury felt I had acted in the heat of passion and after severe provocation,
but that I had killed the policeman. This was the verdict that the jury
did return. There was also a possibility of involuntary manslaughter,
which would mean I had been unconscious at the time as a result of
shock and loss of blood, but that I acted without being aware of what
I was doing. The judge did not give this instruction to the jury, even
though we had introduced expert testimony showing that the wound
I received and the subsequent loss of blood — verified by hospital rec-
ords — was consistent with the possibility of neurogenic shock. There-
fore, the Appellate Court ruled that since the jury had not been given
all the possibilities for reaching a verdict, my conviction was to be re-
versed and I would have to stand trial once more. But I could not be
tried for murder again, only manslaughter. If the jury had found me
guiltv of involuntary manslaughter, the court could not have imposed
a jail sentence on me.
Even though I had to wait ninety days for the decision to become
final, I began immediately to make plans for my departure. Needless
to say, I was eager to get out. but also apprehensive about what my
266
The Penal Colony
life would be like when I returned to Oakland. I felt I would not be
ready to plunge back into things until I had a chance to look around
and get a picture of the entire situation. I had been off the block for
almost three years.
My departure from the California Penal Colony seems like a dream
now. Psychologically I had prepared myself for a longer stay, and my
freedom seemed a lucky extension of life, a chance to accomplish more
than I had expected. I wanted to get the Black Panthers back on the
right track, taking action that could be done only in conjunction with
my comrades and the Central Committee.
Early in August word came from my attorneys that I would be getting
out soon, since I had a bail hearing coming up on August 5, a Wed-
nesday. The Friday before, I spent packing my things in case they de-
cided to move me over the weekend, but nothing happened. Then,
on Monday, I went through the whole release process, but I did not
leave that day either. No one, including the warden, seemed to know
exactly what was going on; he asked me to tell him what time I was
leaving and on what date. I guess he thought I had some special word
from my attorney, because, according to him, the Alameda County
sheriffs department would not tell him how I was going to be trans-
ported, or when. There was some legal entanglement; even though my
conviction had been reversed, the California Appellate Court had given
the state attorney general a thirty-day extension to appeal their deci-
sion. So technically my fate was still in the California Appellate Court's
hands, and I could not be removed until those thirty days were up.
However, Charles Garry worked out an arrangement with the attorney
general to get me released. The attorney general did not want too
much of a fight because public opinion was in my favor, and people
would want to know why I had to sit there for another thirty days
after all their legal maneuvers had been exhausted. I was in limbo,
That Monday, August 3, I was all checked out and ready to go. I
had been having interviews constantly with a number of television and
newspaper reporters who had come to see me. All day long I walked
around the joint, going from the yard up to the visiting room for inter-
views and then back to my cell. A rumor circulated that I was supposed
to leave at twelve noon. The inmates were very excited. Every time I
went for an interview they would say, "Well, he's gone; I saw him get
into a car." Then I would show up again in the yard, and they would
267
Revolutionary Suicide
be let down because I was spoiling the rumors. Then they would ask
me again, "When arc you leaving? Why do you keep starting to leave?"
Finally, just to stop the questions, I told them I was not leaving until
the end of the week.
Privately, I was pretty sure that the Alameda County sheriffs de-
partment would want me to leave in secret and therefore would prob-
ably come to get me very late at night. That was why they had not
given the warden any definite time: they did not want to wade through
the thirty or forty reporters standing outside the gate. I told only a
few friends that I might leave late that night. I was particularly close
with one inmate at San Luis Obispo. He was happy that I was getting
out, but he was also depressed because another friend had just left a
few davs before. Now I was leaving, and he would be pretty much
alone. He had done a long time in prison and had no definite idea of
when ho would be getting out. Most inmates who pull a long time be-
coino somewhat introverted and stay in their cells most of the time.
On that final day I went back to the visiting room after dinner and
was interviewed until about 9:30; then I returned to the yard for the
general lock-up at 10:00 p.m. While I stood outside talking to several in-
mates, a guard came out and saw me. He knew I was supposed to be
back in my cell, but he just said, "Well, you don't have to lock up." I
had never been given a break before, and I thought that was pretty
strange, but since only about thirty minutes remained before general
lock-up, I decided that they were overlooking an infraction this once,
and I went on talking with my friends. About ten minutes later, five or
six guards, the "Red Squad" — a roving group of guards assigned to
watch subversives — -appeared in the yard and came over to me, saying,
"You know we have to lock you up." It was an obvious setup. They
were resentful because I was leaving and were looking for trouble at
the last minute. Mv friends encouraged me to resist them by refusing
to go to my cell, but I knew if I started a fight, they would be involved,
too. I did not mind a fight — I was leaving — but my friends had to stay.
I did not want them to be subjected to further prison discipline, maybe
a delay in their parole dates, or even a new beef against them. Besides,
general lock-up time was near, so we had little to gain from a fight. I
went to my cell after saying a few more words to them. The guards
were true to form right up to the end. They could not get in the last
blow — that would be mine when I walked through those gates — but
they got in as many licks as they could.
268
The Penal Colony
The day had been extremely tiring, so sleep came quickly. It
seemed as if I had been sleeping only a few minutes, although it was
actually 2:30 a.m., when the guards opened the door and told me to
"roll it up." I had turned in all my prison clothes except underwear,
pants, shirt, and my own shoes. I put them on. The cop asked me if I
had a jacket — it was pretty chilly out — but I had turned it in. When
I came out of the cell block into the yard, it felt cold, but nonetheless
refreshing, a kind of misty chill. As I walked out into the cool night
air, I realized that never again, or at least not for a long time, would I
take that walk from my cell to the central area where processing is
done. I went through the strip search again, taking everything off, and
having my mouth, ears, nose, and anus probed. They searched my
pockets. There was little I wanted to take out of that prison, but the
ritual proceeded as usual. Then I was given release clothes — a pair of
khaki pants and a khaki shirt — but they kept my jail underwear and
socks. I signed my release papers, and next I was taken to another room
to await the arrival of the men from the sheriff's department. One
guard was stationed in the room with me, and he tried to start a con-
versation. He told me about his record collection and his elaborate
stereo component and multiplex system. Then he talked about how he
had been a brawler when he was young and how his nose had been
broken over and over again. When he had first started work at the
penitentiary, he said, he used to get into a lot of fights with inmates,
but he found out later that it was better to call other cops before the
convicts got out of line and jumped him. Why he attempted this con-
versation is hard to figure out, but I guess he was trying to let me
know that he realized he could no longer consider me his inferior.
Since our convict-guard relationship had changed, he wanted me to
know that he was a human being with certain thoughts and feelings.
He even offered me a cigarette, but I told him I did not smoke. Then
he went into a long monologue about how he almost got cancer from
smoking, that he had had pleurisy and had caught it just in time, He
went on and on, mostly talking to himself.
Guards are odd people. It is incomprehensible to me how a person
can endure such a meaningless life day after day, year after year, and
seem to be satisfied with it. Their main concerns are dull and petty,
centered around retirement, lawns, fishing, hi-fi sets, This guard was
near retirement. People like him are really lost, as so many people are,
without a purpose in life or the ability to relate to others.
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Revolutionary Suicide
Finally, at 3:30, I was told the sheriffs men had arrived. I took my
two boxes of legal material— they were all I could carry — and started
down the hallway, the guard following resentfully with my typewriter
and another small box. When I got a short distance from the room, the
warden and his assistant met me and wished me luck on my release.
It was like a scene from Kafka or Genet's The Balcony — normal and
logical on the surface but nightmarish and phantasmagorical in essence.
It had the quality of a symbolic ritual; no one was truly involved or
affected. We simply went through the motions,
I walked through the visiting room and out the open gates, the first
time I had gone through them; I had arrived by bus the back way.
Then we walked down the stairs and toward the main gate of the
prison— the last barrier. As we approached, the electric gate buzzed
and ground open. This made the whole scene even more unreal because
no one could be seen opening the gates; they simply parted when we
stepped toward them. Two deputy sheriffs in plain clothes were waiting
beside two uniformed guards from the Penal Colony. The cops greeted
nrie another; they were old buddies. I signed some final papers con-
finning that I had all my property, and once more I was in the control
ill the Alameda County sheriffs department.
270
Part Six
There is an old African saying, "I am we." If you met
an African in ancient times and asked him who he was,
he would reply, "I am we." This is revolutionary suicide;
I, we, all of us are the one and the multitude.
28
What turns me cold in all this experience is the certaintv
that thousands of innocent victims are in jail today because
they had neither money, experience nor friends to help
them. The eyes of the world were on our trial despite the
desperate effort of press and radio to suppress the facts and
cloud the real issues; the courage and money of friends and
of strangers who dared stand for a principle freed me; but
God only knows how many who were as innocent as I and
my colleagues are today in hell. They daily stagger out of
prison doors, embittered, vengeful, hopeless, ruined. And
of this army of the wronged, the proportion of Negroes is
frightful. We protect and defend sensational cases where
Negroes are involved. But the great mass of arrested or ac-
cused black folk have no defense. There is desperate need
of nationwide organizations to oppose this national racket
of railroading to jails and chain gangs the poor, friendless
and black.
The Autobiography of W . E. B. Du Bois
Release
There was no time to feel relief, let alone an illusion of freedom
once I had come through the gates. Before I got my bearings, one of
the deputy sheriffs came over to me. "We're going to have to shackle
you," he said. I did not reply. They put chains around my waist and
under my crotch; two chains went from my waist to each wrist and an-
other from one hand to the other. Then thev shackled my ankles and
ran a chain from my crotch to the chains on my ankles. Finally, they
put a six-inch chain from one ankle to the other, so that I had to shuffle
273
Revolution/in/ Suiridi
when I walked. I could barely move my arms. The police carried my
boxes, while I shuffled about twenty-five yards to an unmarked car, I
got in and tried to find a comfortable position. It was not easy.
The two deputies got in front. While one of them was starting the
engine, the other one said, "Wait a minute, I have to get my equalizer
out of the trunk." I glanced back as he was coming around the car and
saw him putting what looked like a snub-nosed .38 revolver in his belt.
With his gun and me in chains, I guess we were equal.
I had not been in an automobile for twenty-two months, and it felt
strange to be speeding down the highway at eighty miles an hour, We
passed a large sign saying "Huey Road," which pointed off to the right.
I had seen it on the bus coming to the Penal Colony, and I remember
telling the other inmates, "The last time they saw Huey he was tearing
up Huey Road at high speed." This time I passed it without imagining
mvsclf taking off up that little dirt road.
The deputies talked to each other about how stupid it was of Presi-
ilcnl Nixon to make the .statement about Charles Manson the day be-
I •>■•••." 1 itgn'ed with them about Nixon's stupidity. It did not surprise
uic to Irani that he had made a remark that violated the ethics and
principles ol the legal profession. Nixon is a man who should never
■.I ray Irom his speech writer's notes, because every time he does, he
slicks his loot in his mouth. Now there was the possibility that Manson
would have to be given a new trial.
The deputies asked me what I thought my bail would be, I told
them I had no idea. They guessed somewhere between $100,000 and
8200,000 and went on speculating about the amount and whether I
would get out or not. I assured them that I would be released immedi-
ately, even with a bail of a million dollars, because the people would
not stand for my remaining in jail. They agreed that I probably would
be released. I was always arrogant with policemen. If you take any
° On August 3, President Nixon, speaking in Denver, Colorado, on the theme of
law and order, mentioned the trial of Charles Manson and three women co-defend-
ants in Los Angeles that was then under way. They were being tried for the August
7, 1969, murders of Sharon Tate, a film actress, and six friends who were visiting
her at her home in Benedict Canyon, Los Angeles. President Nixon said that Man-
son "was guilty directly or indirectly of eight or nine murders without reason." Be-
cause of the nationwide consternation over his remark. President Nixon, a lawyer,
immediately issued a statement saying that "he did not intend to speculate as to
whether the Tate defendants are guilty, in fact, or not. . . . Defendants should be
presumed to be innocent."
274
Release
other attitude with them, they interpret it as weakness, because they
assume an innate superiority over you. When they stopped at a little
truck cafe in King City to get coffee and doughnuts, they asked me if
I wanted any, and I said no. Later they asked me where H. Rap Brown
was; again, I had no idea. I cannot imagine why they asked me since I
certainly would not have told them even if I had known.
Coming up on Salinas we passed Soledad State Prison, eerie in the
early morning light. The grey walls loomed up — silent and ominous —
in the half light. I thought of all my brothers in there, and George
Jackson. It was weird and unsettling to be such a short distance from
them — without their having the slightest awareness of it, But they were
probably asleep at that hour. The deputies said they were glad they did
not work at Soledad because of the militancy of the prisoners and the
constant trouble and upheaval. They talked about different prisons in
the state and asked me about the Penal Colony. I described the layout
and physical facilities, which are probably better than any other peni-
tentiary in the state, with the exception of Chino. Chino has far better
facilities — a swimming pool and golf course — and prisoners are allowed
to wear their own clothes. Also, security is less strict. The Penal Colony
is only about ten years old, so it is also cleaner than most. But all pris-
ons are the same; an inmate has to live in a space ten by seven and a
half feet, with a toilet, washbasin, desk, chair, bunk, and concrete
floor, no matter where he is, When you are locked in a room like that
day after day, it does not matter where you are. The deputies admitted
that there seemed to be no answer to the problems of prisons, that
they just do not work. Conjugal visits for prisoners would help, they
seemed to think, the way it worked in Mexico, despite the poor physi-
cal facilities and conditions. I pointed out that since 80 per cent of the
inmates in the Penal Colony were homosexuals, it probably would not
make much difference there.
They talked for a while about Mexico, how nice it is there in the
summer and how beautiful the parks and buildings are, particularlv in
Mexico City. But one of them said that every time he goes to a Latin
country, even Mexico, he is afraid a guy like Castro will take over and
kidnap all the Americans and not let them return to the United States.
I assured him that even if someone like Castro came to power, he
would probably pay the cop's trip back on the fastest plane. This is
what is done in Cuba: flights for counterrevolutionaries leave fre-
275
Revolutionary Suicide
quently. Fidel's policy is that anyone who wants to should get out im-
mediately. Even Cuban nationals — members of the bourgeoisie — are
allowed to leave, and most of them now live in Miami, so many, in
fact, that it is called Little Havana. Cops are generally uninformed and
politically naive, but on the subject of socialism, they are especially
ignorant.
It was beginning to get light as we drove . through Gilroy, thirty-
three miles south of San Jose, about 5:30 a.m. All the way back to Oak-
land, I could not take my eyes off the passing landscape, yet my im-
pressions were hazy, partly because we drove so fast, but mainly be-
cause it was just too much for me to take in. It was the sensation of
being heavily bombarded with a variety of stimuli. Most people take
thc.se .stimuli for granted, but after two years in a restricted and mo-
iiotnnoiis environment, it is impossible to absorb what you see. We
passed houses, fields, farm laborers, animals, and all sorts of sights
grown dim in in}' memory. The mountains in the distance, the sky, the
movements ol life — 1 wanted them all at once, but I could not handle
it . It di.'.l urbed me.
Shortly after Gilroy, we stopped at a gas station to fill up, and the
driver nsked me if I wanted to go to the bathroom; I said no, and he
ambled around the side of the station while the other cop stayed with
mi', The attendant was a young kid who did not seem to know his
way artiuml ears. After he started the gas, he opened the front door of
the ear with the comment that the lights were on. When he hit the
button tf) cut them, the cop became very tense, but the boy did not
notice anything inside. Then he went to the front to check the water
and oil. He opened the hood about the same time the other cop came
out of the bathroom, and, turning to the cop, he said, "What's this?,"
indicating something under the hood. When the cop told him it was a
siren, the boy turned bright red, quickly closed the hood, and went
around to finish the gas. Then he kind of peeked in the car, and when
he saw my chains, he got even more flustered. When we pulled off,
I watched him out of the rear window, standing there in amazement.
We ran into some commuter traffic around San Jose, nothing too
bad, and finally, about 7:00 a.m., arrived in Oakland. The streets were
still deserted. I noticed immediately how many things had changed,
there were buildings I had never seen before. We went bv the construc-
tion site of the new Bay Area Rapid Transit building and the new
276
Release
museum that had been going up while I awaited trial. During those
eleven months I used to watch its day-to-day progress from the county
jail. The deputies named the new buildings, telling me about them and
trying to be friendly in their own way. When they indulged in small
talk of a pleasant kind and asked me questions, I did not hesitate to
answer them. Not that it brought us closer — nothing so superficial will
do that—but it is the easiest way to keep the situation cool. As a matter
of fact, I recommend this kind of behavior; no matter what is going
through a person's mind, it is always to his advantage to keep the en-
emy off balance.
As we drove through the Oakland streets, the deputies talked to the
police at the county jail and told them we were coming into the court-
house through the tunnel. The answer was to use the. front entrance
because the elevator was tied up. We swung around to the front of the
building, right across from Lake Merritt Park, where Little Bobby
Hutton's rally was held after his funeral in 1968. It brought back mem-
ories — for the better part of a year, from the window of the county jail,
I had watched the park and the people walking in it.
Now, a few people were on the street. How colorful their clothes
seemed. This is what I mean by being bombarded with an overwhelm-
ing amount of stimuli all at once. I could not get a clear impression of
anv one thing; everything tended to blur and become indistinct. The
whole experience was devastating. Where I had been for thirty-three
months everyone wore the same clothes, did the same things, and went
to the same place every day. You never wondered where people were
going or what they were doing. On any day all you expected to happen
was what had happened the day before, and the day before that. In
my first few days outside jail I had to make an attempt to remain calm,
to keep the action and unpredictability from exciting my nervous sys-
tem. Even the sight of ordinary activities, such as cars stopping for
traffic lights, some going in one direction, some in another, people in
the street, was too much.
When we stopped in front of the jail, the shackles were removed
from my legs, although the chains on my waist and arms were left on,
The police carried my baggage while I walked through the front door,
A cop had come down to meet us from the jail on the tenth floor. His
face was familiar. Unless we have a run-in, cops do not make much of
an impression on me; they just come and go, locking me up or letting
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Revolutionary Suicide
me out, and that is all there is to it. But this cop's face was too familiar
to pass off; I tried to recall what kind of run-in I had had with him.
When we got on the elevator, this one had a kind of chicken smile
on his face. ''Well, are you going to get your old suite back?" he asked.
"I don't know," I answered, "but I can do time any place in this jail.
That's what I did before, and I can do it now, particularly since I will
probably be out in a few hours." "Yeah, I guess So," he replied. "You
think you'll make bail? How much do you think it will be? A couple of
hundred thousand, maybe five hundred thousand?" The same old ques-
tion. "I'll be out in two hours," I said. "Well, it really helps to be rich,
eh, Newton 2 " "Maybe it does," I shot back, "but I'm not rich. The peo-
ple will sacrifice whatever is necessary and get me out." He changed
the subject then. "You've gotten big; you must be working out."
My mind was not on the conversation. I was still trying to place
him, but I said, "Yeah, I worked out every day." He said, "Yeah, that's
what 1 should have been doing." He had trouble saying that. Suddenly,
I i cMiicinbi'i'cd him. He had gotten pretty fat, but he was the same
policeman I had had a run-in with in solitary. One night during my
trial, about 1:00 a.m., this fellow came around to take the count with a
Black policeman. I was half asleep. He opened my door quickly, then,
starting to close it. he asked, "Did I wake you up, you asshole?" I
jumped up. The door was locked, but I guess I woke up half the jail
shouting at him, calling him everything except a child of God and in-
viting him back to open the door so he could show what kind of a
man he was.
While I was yelling, the Black policeman with him started to laugh
as they walked down the hall. I do not know whether he was laughing
at me or at his partner. Some of the other inmates who were awake
thought he was laughing out of desperation. The other policeman
would not come back; he was much too cowardly. The next day, when
I went to court, the Black cop was still on duty — he must have been
pulling two shifts that day — and I asked him the white cop's name.
He said that he thought we knew each other and were just kidding.
I told him that he knew very well I did not kid around with any of
them, including himself. The onlv relationship we had was that of pris-
oner-guard — nothing else. I did not appreciate the other guard's re-
marks, I said, and I was definitely going to bring it up in court. The
Black cop said that if I brought it up in court, he would feel compelled
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to testify on ray behalf and say that I was right and the cop was wrong.
He had not said anything at the time, he repeated, because he thought
we played together all the time. He promised to tell the other cop about
mv reaction, and after I reminded him that I did not play with any of
them, he said no more about it. It did not come up in court, and I never
learned whether the Black cop would have testified for me,
All this was racing through my mind as we rode up in the elevator.
Once off the elevator, we walked into the bullpen, the waiting area of
the jail. The shackles were taken off my hands and waist, and I was
stripped and searched again. After I put my clothes back on, we went
through the long booking and processing procedure. Then I was as-
signed to a cell in B tank, which is the receiving and reception tank.
Right around the corner, about fifteen feet away, was the hospital
tank, where inmates are kept in semi-isolation. It holds only about five
guys, and inmates who have minor illnesses are kept there, but never
for very long. Most of the men who come there are either from Death
Row at San Quentin or on their way to Death Row and awaiting sen-
tence after conviction of first-degree murder. The regular tanks in the
county jail all adjoin a dayroom outside the cells. Inmates are taken
out of their cells at seven in the morning and locked up again at seven
at night, spending the entire twelve hours in between in the dayroom.
The}' have no access to their bunks during the day. But in the hospital
tank the inmates can go back and forth to their cells whenever they
please. The men on their way to Death Row are put in this tank be-
cause many of them need ready access to the legal material in their cells.
They can also keep typewriters in the hospital tank, another taboo in
the regular tanks. The hospital tank is called "Little Death Row" by
the inmates, because prisoners there are either from Death Row, fight-
ing some part of their case, or they are on reversal prior to retrial. Most
of the inmates from Alameda County on Death Row at Quentin went
through this hospital tank at some point. I had been there on Little
Death Row myself, for four months, while I was in the county jail serv-
ing time for the Odell Lee assault case, I had gotten to know a number
of guys there then.
Within an hour, I was back in touch with inmates I had met there
thirty-three months before. During the interval, some had gone away
and come back again to jail on new beefs. One of them was a young
guy called "Nice Man." Nice Man had gained weight, too, since I had
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last seen him. He was a big one — 6 feet, three inches and 230 pounds —
very articulate and bright but not well educated because he had spent
most of his young life inside jails. But nobody was better at survival on
the block. This time he was in for bank robbery or kidnaping — I'm not
such which. Of his twenty-two years, eleven had been spent in various
juvenile halls — Tracy and Soledad.
I asked the inmates about another friend, McPherson. He was a
white guy I became pretty close to when we did time together in Little
Death Row before he had been sent on to Death Row at Quentin; I
had heard something about a reversal, and it turned out to be true.
McPherson was in the hospital tank, right around the corner, so I yelled
out to him. He was happy to hear my voice, and we cut up about old
times for a while. When I asked him about his case, he told me he ex-
pected to draw another death penalty. He had been convicted again of
first-degree murder, and he was going through his penalty phase
starting the next week.
McPherson has only one eye. He lost the other one at Santa Rita
piisoii before lie was charged with murder. In isolation, where no one
w.r, allowed to talk to him, McPherson went out of his mind and stuck
a pencil in his eye. The guard said that when McPherson put this
pencil in his eye, he fell out, shouting, "I killed Goscher." Goscher was
a German engineer whom McPherson was accused and convicted of
killing. But McPherson got a reversal because the Appellate Court
ruled him insane at the time of the statement. They ruled that even if
he had made the statement, it could not be used against him as a con-
fession. At the new trial they convicted him all over again when his
cousin, who at first had been charged with the murder, took on a
wheeler-dealer attorney for himself, got immunity from the prosecu-
tion, and then testified against McPherson. The cousin admitted par-
ticipating in the murder but testified that McPherson did the killing,
and no amount of denial could save McPherson, His cousin never did
any time.
About 10:00 a.m. two of my attorneys came to discuss bail, which
they thought would probably be about $100,000. They were trying to
° In California, defendants facing the death penalty are given two trials. The first
trial is to determine guilt. If found guilty of first-degree murder, they must stand
trial again, with the same jury, to decide what sentence will be given. The penalty
phase is the time between the two trials.
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get me released on my own recognizance, but the outcome was uncer-
tain. The district attorney seemed very indulgent and co-operative,
which would have been surprising under any circumstances but was
particularly unexpected now, because the district attorney was Lowell
Jensen the prosecutor in my trial; he had succeeded Frank Coakley as
district attorney of Alameda County. We puzzled over this new atti-
tude and decided that Jensen knew bail in my ease was inevitable;
therefore, lie was being co-operative to show his "fairness." Defeat
would have been a strike against him, and bail was mandatory any-
way, since I could no longer be tried for a capital offense. But how
much would it cost? My attorneys had gone first to court, and the judge
had sent them to the district attorney. When they tried that, Jensen
had told them to see the judge; they were just passing the buck back
and forth. But, finally, when the district attorney was notified that the
buck stopped with him, he resigned himself to it.
My lawyers pointed out that I had never jumped bail and had al-
ways appeared in court on time. Jensen said he believed that I would
show up in court, so there was no question of not granting bail. While
he did not want to upset the Black community by setting bail too high,
he also did not want to make his friends angry by setting it too low.
As far as Jensen was concerned, justice had nothing to do with the pro-
cedure, only politics. My attorneys reminded him that in cases like
mine, where a person has a reputation for showing up in court, bail is
usually never higher than $5,000. Although Jensen agreed, he said he
would have to set a higher bail because I had already been convicted,
because of the seriousness of the matter, and because Eldridge Cleaver
had jumped bail. My lawyers said we would agree to something like
° After the April 6, 1968, ambush of the Black Panthers by the police, in which
Bobby Hutton died, Eldridge Cleaver was sent to Vacaville prison by the California
Adult Authority for parole violation and other charges. He remained there for two
months. Charles Garry petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus in the court of Solano
County Superior Court Judge Raymond Sherwin, who reversed the Adult Authority
order on September 27, 1968. Judge Sherwin noted that Cleaver's parole had been
revoked without hearing and that no proof had been supplied to support the
charges brought against him. Cleaver was released on $50,000 bail, and the Adult
Authority immediately began moves to have Judge Sherwin's ruling reversed by the
California Appellate Court. Both the Appellate Court and the State Superior Court
agreed with the Adult Authority's decision to revoke parole, and Cleaver was or-
dered returned to jail on November 27, 1968. He failed to appear and fled first to
Cuba, and later to Algeria.
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$10,000, although they felt that amount was too high. These negotia-
tions took place in the district attorney's office on Tuesday morning,
August 4, and I was scheduled to appear in court the next day,
Wednesday. While they talked, I waited in the jail, and my attorneys
reported from time to time.
Meanwhile, nothing much had changed at Alameda County Jail.
Poor food, dirty cells, harassment by guards, and a hundred other hu-
man indignities were routine. Nice Man and I had a good discussion
about the Black Panther Party. He was a tank trusty with more free-
dom than the rest.
One of Nice Man's duties was to pass out food to the rest of the
prisoners at mealtimes; for this he got an extra sandwich and coffee.
Even- day around 6:00 p.m. the police escorted the trusties bringing
the food from the kitchen to the tank, and Nice Man passed it out in
I he davroom. That Tuesday, just twelve hours after I arrived, a number
ill llic inmates were inside their cells; I do not know why, maybe they
wnv nol feeling well. This meant that the cop was supposed to open
tlif gale to each cell .so the trusty could give the prisoner his food.
( Klin wise, the trustv would have to slide the tray under the door.
Then: is an excellent reason not to slide the trays. The bars of the cells
are filthv, and if a trav of food is slid under, cruel is likely to fall into
it. More than two vears before this, when I was first in the Alameda
County Jail, a grand jurv had toured the jail, and one of their recom-
mendations had been that no food was to pass underneath the door.
When Nice Man asked the guard to open up, the cop refused and told
Nice Man to slide the tray underneath. Nice Man refused, explaining
why.
At this point, the cop went into an irrelevant diatribe, telling Nice
Man if he acted like a man he would treat him like a man. Nice Man
said that he did not want to be treated like a man; he wanted to be
treated like a convict, and in turn he would treat the cop like a police-
man. Nice Man is an interesting person to watch in tense situations be-
cause he moves when he means things, and now he was making little
movements with his arms and legs. The argument went back and forth
for some time, Finally, Nice Man slid the food underneath the door,
but the argument continued. I tried to get Nice Man to cool it. I know
what happens in situations like that; when you are locked down, there
is no win. And while you have to defend some principles all the way,
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others do not infringe upon basic rights, and it is best to go along until
conditions are more favorable. In other words, it is hard to win, and
most of the time you lose. Before going too far, you should be sure that
the principle is worth your life.
Now it escalated. Every time the cop said something, Nice Man re-
plied. Sliding the food under the door was no longer the subject; it was
just an angry argument heavy with insults. I tried again to get Nice
Man to stop arguing, but he would not. He just stood there at the door
to the tank, going back and forth with the cop, moving and twitching.
Everyone else was eating quietly and watching.
Abruptly, the cop left; I told Nice Man about the grand jury finding
years before. He was absolutely right, I said, but he ought either to do
something or not do it, but not argue about it. He should just let the
chips fall where they may, because arguing would not get anything
down.
Ten minutes later, when all was cool again, the cop came back and
ordered Nice Man to "roll it up"— he was going to the hole. Nice Man
flew into a rage; he was not going, and the cop went away for rein-
forcements. In the county jail every prisoner has a wooden box where
he keeps his possessions. As soon as the cop left, Nice Man got his box
out, jumped on it, and broke off a piece of wood about four feet long
and two inches thick; then he stood there waiting for the onslaught.
The cop who had provoked this incident was Black, and now he
came striding back with six of his white colleagues. The seven of them
opened the gates, ordered everybody else to roll into the cells, and
told Nice Man to come with them to the hole. Nice Man stood silently,
clutching his club. Impasse. Had we rolled into our cells, Nice Man
would have been left alone in the dayroom with them. Everyone
looked at me. I did not move; nobody else did either. If I had moved,
it would have been to go down with Nice Man, since he was a friend
of mine and 100 per cent right. In wondering why the other inmates
did not roll in, it finally dawned on me that I was the reason. So we
stood frozen, the cops with their long clubs and their Mace, the inmates
watching, and Nice Man with his broken box.
This kind of unified action is unusual among inmates in jail. I have
been in a number of uprisings at the Alameda County Jail, and each
time there was always a split between the guys who would ease back
into their cells and those who were willing to defy the guards. This
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time the prisoners were solid — white, Black, and Chicano. Finally, two
cops convinced Nice Man to come out, and I went over to the bars
to intervene and asked the policeman if I could speak with him. He
said no, and another cop shouted out, "If no one will roll in, do you
guys know what this means 3 This is a riot — an insurrection — disobey-
ing orders. You have one last chance." Still no one moved, Then the
other cop turned to me and said, "Newton, did you have something to
say to me?" I went back to the bars and spoke to him in a low voice,
telling him that he was wrong because he had provoked the whole
thing. It was a matter of saving face now, I said, and Nice Man also
had to save face and not be intimidated. They could both save face by
a compromise: I would try to convince Nice Man to move to another
tank with the same facilities as B tank. In this way, they would still be
in authority, but Nice Man would not be punished, which was best,
because he had been right all along. If they would not accept this plan,
injuble was certain. Since I was going to court to be released the next
dav, I really did not want a battle, but I had made up my mind to be
involved if il was forced on me. I was not going to let them take Nice
Man to the hole without a fight.
While I talked, the police gathered around and listened. Finally,
they accepted the plan and promised they would not jump Nice Man
once he came out of his cell and that they would not put him in the
hole. Then I went over to Nice Man and explained the plan to him.
At first he refused, then reluctantly agreed to go out, dropping his
weapon inside his cell and walking down the hall with the guards close
behind. We listened for scuffling but heard nothing.
About fifteen minutes after the incident, this same Black cop came
back and ordered everyone to roll in. Then, after the inmates were
locked up, he called me to the bars and informed me that I would be
isolated the next day. When I asked him why, he cited the incident.
Was he saying that I was responsible for the incident, I asked. No, he
said; my presence was the reason the prisoners would not roll in when
ordered and the reason they resisted as one group. I told him that I
doubted that I was the cause of their united action. The prisoners
showed their solidarity because thev were tired of being mistreated
and pushed around. As for me, I went on to say, I could do time any-
where, including the hole, because I did not have loner to stav. "So
move me wherever you want to," I told him. "There is no argument
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whatsoever." Then I added that he did not have to wait until the next
day; I could go right away because I wanted to get situated at once
and be comfortable. I do not like to move once I get settled in a cell.
He began to excuse himself, saying, "It's not my fault; it's already on
the movement sheet that you have to be isolated anyway. You can
wait for the next shift to isolate you in the morning." But I told him
no explanation was necessary; they could move me right away.
Actually, the hole was a bluff. They had me scheduled to go to
Little Death Row, around the corner, and took me there that night.
When I arrived, I found mv friend McPherson and two other guys,
one of them a brother with a murder beef on him, who was a real
psych case. He should not have been in a jail but in a hospital, or,
rather, in good hands, because the hospitals are no good. He was
obsessed with his earlier time in a hospital, where thev filled him with
poison and gave him shock treatments. Back in a hospital he felt sure
he would die.
He had earlier killed a guy on the street who approached him the
wrong way and put his hands on him, a violation of the code on the
block. For people like that he explained that he kept a sharp knife,
sitting on his porch, sharpening his knife with a stone all dav long,
watching to make sure that no pervert messed with the little girls in
his neighborhood. The new murder beef went like this: one day as he
sat in a restaurant talking to a lady friend, some guy rushed up and
poked his finger on his chest, saying, "Don't talk to my woman." When
the guv did that, the brother slit his throat. He did not want to be in
jail, and he feared returning to the hospital. As far as the hospital was
concerned, he was right to be fearful, but he did need help; he should
not have been in jail.
The other white guy had been on Death Row in Quentin for a few
years before his reversal, He was preparing to go to trial again. Mc-
Pherson, the fourth guy, was my old friend, convicted again, and wait-
ing for sentencing. He thought he had little chance of escaping Big
Death Row.
Little Death Row was a depressing experience. When I had been
there before, I was facing the gas chamber, too, and felt more a part
of it. We were all in the same thing, McPherson, myself, and another
guy who is now on Big Death Row. Back then, I had accepted Little
Death Row as a thing to be dealt with. But now I would be on the
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streets in a few hours while the others might never walk out. Knowing
I could do little for them left me feeling like an outsider, and also
privileged, and I never like to feel privileged. But they all wished me
luck. I bedded down for the night with these things going around in
my mind, knowing that it was the last night that I would spend in jail
for some time. It had been a long day, and I rested well.
The next morning I had to be in court at 9:15. My attorneys came
early, and we talked for a short time until I was herded into an ele-
vator with so many other inmates we could hardly breathe. They were
all interested in my case, and knowing that I would be out soon, asked
me questions and tried to find out if I would do errands for them and
other favors. On the fifth floor we were placed in holding cells while
we waited for the court session to begin. My name was called first. As
I entered the packed courtroom, the first people I saw were Charles
Garry, Fav Stender. and Barney Dreyfus at the attorneys' table, Be-
hind them were mv family and friends and quite a few reporters I had
come lo know over the past two years.
doing into the packed courtroom and seeing the reporters on one
Mtlr, mv family, friends, and spectators on the other was like a flash-
back to the same scene two years before. The whole thing seemed to
he starting over again. It reminded me of a line from Kafka's The Trial
that I think of when events seem to be repeating themselves. When K.,
the hero of the novel, is about to be executed, he says ". . . at the be-
ginning of my case I wanted it to finish, and at the end of it [I] wanted
it to begin again." At first K. is bothered by the confusion of going
thiough the court system — the slow wheels of justice or injustice, the
questioning, the stifling routine. It is a slow, draining process, which K.
equates with the absurd toil and the endless striving of life. I felt the
same emotions — wanting the absurdities and the eternal toil to end.
Then, at the end, I was not quite ready for it to be over, and felt a
vague desire for it to start all over again. Two years were obliterated,
The judge sat in the same seat as if he had never moved from it; the
attorneys stood at the same table. Perhaps the two years had only been
a nightmare between days in court, and now I had awakened, to go
through the trial again and again, in a vicious circle.
Then, with a surge of happiness at seeing my old friends in the
spectator section, I realized that it was really over. It had been worth
it — the perseverance, the hanging on, the not ever giving up. Now I
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could retum to them with my head high because I had not let them
down, And they, on their part, had not let me down; together we had
endured and prevailed over the ordeal without letting it change us in
essential ways. That was my feeling. Suddenly, the bad dream of thirty-
three months seemed insignificant.
The district attorney had promised to come up with a "happy
medium" regarding bail. His happy medium turned out to be 350,000,
and when he recommended this amount to the judge, it was accepted.
This was a high and unjust sum. Who has that kind of money? I knew
it would be a hardship for the people to raise that much cash. The
judge did not show any courage, either, by lowering the bail — or even
raising it. He went right along with the recommendation, so it was
really the district attorney who set bail. This is the kind of "justice"
dealt out to the people. The district attorney in his immense power
runs the show. The defense attorney is also an officer of the court and
is supposedly on the same footing as the district attorney. But the dis-
trict attorney has many more privileges because he represents the
established order — the powerful and the rich — who see to it that he is
backed up and supported. The defense attorney merely represents the
people.
After my bail was set, I returned to the holding cell. The inmates
waiting to go to court offered congratulations all around, happy that I
would soon be free. Then I was taken back upstairs, where I sat with
my attorneys in the lawyers' room and discussed the bail situation. We
had raised some money, but not enough, and they were in favor of
getting it from a bail bondsman, but I was against this idea. Rather
than come out right away, I wanted to stay in jail until all the bail had
been raised. This was important. A bail bondsman fee was about
$5,000, and I felt that if all the money could be raised without him.
that $5,000 was better spent for community programs.
Argument was intense. The attorneys and all my brothers said it
was more important that I hit the street right away, to give the move-
ment a positive jolt. I argued that the Party has always discouraged
putting up 10 per cent bond for other comrades, Policy has been to
stay in jail until the whole amount was raised, so that the Party re-
covered the whole amount. In the first four years of the Partv we had
been forced to raise several million dollars in bail around the country;
if the 10 per cent that had gone to pay bail bondsman fees had been
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Revolutionary Suiritlr
channeled into community programs, we. would have been better off.
To me it was a matter of principle to slay in jail, but I was overruled.
In the end, it all came to nothing anyway. No bail bondsman had an
insurance company that would let him put up the money. We had to
raise it all.
I did not return to my cell, but remained in the attorneys' room. I
was hungry now. On leaving the Penal Colony, I had resolved not to
eat until I was free. I simply fasted. In some respects Alameda County-
Jail had changed. It did not seem as dirty as it once had been, but the
food was still unacceptable. Also, everyone washes his own tray in a
five-gallon bucket of water, and with thirty guys washing in one bucket,
the water gets really slimy. Part of my resolution to fast had to do with
the lack of sanitary methods for cleaning the utensils. It is a miracle
that everyone does not come down with dysentery — or worse.
While we were waiting, my lawyer noticed a group of police leav-
ing the building with boxes of clubs. "They must be about to release
von," he said. "Thev're. going out with clubs." After this, some prisoners
passed through the room, a couple of brothers out of the tank. I gave
ihrm the power sign, and they returned it.
A few moments later, one of the sheriffs deputies came in to ask
me to go directly across the street upon my release in order to avoid
a confrontation with the police. A crowd had gathered outside in an-
ticipation of a rail}' to be held at Lake Merritt Park as soon as I got
out. The people were blocking the street, he said, and in the interest of
the court they would have to clear it. He had a big, sneaky smile on his
face, i looked into his cold blue eyes and told him I would leave the
jail, and that was it. Then my attorneys signed some papers, and I
went back to my cell to pick up my paraphernalia and bid all the in-
mates good-bye. I had to do this quickly, because again I felt guilt}'
over my good fortune while so many of them would have to go without
freedom for a long time — perhaps even until the climax of the revolu-
tion. My only consoling thought was that perhaps after my release I
could do something to hasten that event.
Mv lawvers took mv boxes, and I went to the gate and walked out
of the jail on the tenth floor. Ahead, along the hall, was a solid wall of
newspapermen and TV reporters, cameras and lights. Everyone was
yelling, asking questions, demanding answers. I tried to make my way
to the elevator with my brothers Walter, Jr., Melvin, David Hilliard,
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and a couple of Black Panthers clearing the way. We managed to get
in the elevator, but at the last minute, with a desperate lunge, reporters
crowded in with us. We started down, but the overloaded elevator
stopped cold, just below the fourth floor. We walked the rest of the
way down the stairs.
On the first floor we made our way out to the main entrance on
Lake Merritt Park. It was a bright, blue-sky day, just the kind of day I
had wanted. Looking ahead, I could see thousands of beautiful people
and a sea of hands, all of them waving. When I gave them the power
sign, the hands shot up in reply and everyone started to cheer. God, it
was good. I felt this tremendous sense of release, of liberation, like
taking off your shirt on a hot day and feeling free, unbound by any-
thing. Later, I did take my shirt off, but it was obvious now that we
would not be able to get out the front door. A mass of cheering sup-
porters stretched from the steps all the way across the street into the
park. I had to fight back the tears. It was wonderful to be out, but
even more exhilarating to see the concern and emotion of the people.
The crush was so overwhelming that we turned back and went to the
other exit. But the people quickly ran around to the other side, and as
we went down the stairs and into the street they surged around us,
shouting joyfully, carrying us along.
My sisters Leola, Doris, and Myrtle ran up to me, and we embraced.
Fay Stender, Alex Hoffmann, and Edward Keating were in front of me.
while Charles Garry was swamped by newsmen. My brothers Melvin
and Walter were there, David and Pat Hilliard, Masai Hewitt, the
Minister of Education, and many Black Panther comrades, It was al-
most a stampede. I could not walk; I felt I was suffocating, but it did
not matter. In the euphoria I just held on to my relatives, friends, and
comrades, and was dragged along, my feet hardly touching the ground.
It was a beautiful day.
When we finally got to the car, we could not move it because of the
crush. The only way to clear the area was to climb up on top of the car.
First I asked them to clear the street, but they demanded that I say
something. I was going to make a speech and hold an impromptu rally
right then and there, but from my vantage point I could see the police
edging toward the crowd with their clubs, shields, and helmets. They
were itching to move in, Since it is against Party principles to encour-
age mass confrontations with the police if it can be avoided, I just said
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Revolutionary ShiViV/i*
a few words ami asked them to clear the street. They still would not
leave, but demanded more, so 1 told them to go to Bobby Hutton Me-
morial Park, where we would hold a rally. At that, the people broke
for their cars, which was fortunate, since it slowed the cops down.
Now we had to do something. I had lied to get the people out of there
and away from the police. No rally was scheduled for Bobby Hutton
Memorial Park, and I sent a brother to the park to tell them we could
not come there that day for security reasons. Everyone— my lawyers
included — advised me not to show up unprotected at big gatherings
like this. It was just an open invitation for some maniac to take a shot
at me. There was still so much feeling about the case in Oakland that
we decided to wait for cooler times before I appeared at mass gather-
ings.
I wanted to go directly home, but my brothers and sisters thought
it would be too much of a shock for my father, who was not well and
unable to sustain high emotion. My mother was in the hospital. She
knew nothing of my release, but Melvin and the others figured she
enuld handle it better than mv father. Before I saw her, however, I
weuf to .1 friend's house, got out of my prison clothes, and went to a
news conference at Charles Garry's office, The news conference w-as
unusual. Because it included a lot of movement people I had come to
like over the months in jail, it was anything but the kind of cool en-
counter I usually have with the regular news media. A question would
come at mc. and when I started to answer I would suddenly realize
that this was a person I wanted to rap with personally. This happened
over and over again with people there that day. Some of the Establish-
ment press came, but it was 90 per cent underground press. At this
press conference I offered Black Panther troops to the National Libera-
tion Front of the People's Republic of Vietnam.
When we left the news conference, I went to the hospital to see my
mother. It was a joyous reunion. Later, when my father and I met, he
was deeplv moved, and wept. He told me he had not expected to live
long enough to see me freed from prison.
During the first few days out of jail, I wondered when reality would
come again — in relation to myself, to the world around me, to all that
was happening to mc. I had literally forgotten how to live outside.
I had to develop all over again my old reflex actions to avoid being
startled or puzzled by certain phenomena. People who have never
290
Release
served time in prison do not realize that a large percentage of their
behavior is a conditioned response involving no reasoning process.
They instinctively react in the right way because thev are used to the
familiar patterns in their lives. Social stimuli and social forces do not
baffle them,
Cut off from all this for a few years, life around me at first seemed
jerky and out of synchronization. All the sounds, movements, and colors
coming on simultaneously— television, telephone, radio, people talking
coming and going, doorbells and phones ringing— were dizzying at
first. Ordinary life seemed hectic and chaotic, and quite overwhelming.
I even had to figure out what to eat and what time I was going to bed.
In prison, all this had been decided for me.
Walking through the streets was an indescribable experience the
closest I have ever felt to being truly free, with people walking by,
recognizing me, and waving. I went everywhere, visiting people in the
community, to the surprise of many who never expected to see me on
the street, only on television or maybe in Hollywood after I was re-
leased. But I was determined to get back among them. I walked in
Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond, and San Francisco. I went to Seventh
Street, Sacramento Avenue, Potrero Hill, Hunter's Point, Richmond
North Richmond, West Oakland, Peralta Street, Cvpress Street East
Oakland, and Parchester Village. I visited several bars, where I had
done a lot of recruiting. And everywhere I got the same reaction- peo-
ple wondered why I had come back to them. I explained that neither
news reporters nor television cameras had got me out of prison- the
people had freed me, and I had come back to thank them and be with
them.
At Father Earl Neil's church, St. Augustine's, I talked to mem-
bers of his congregation. That, too, was a warm experience. Father
Neil is a young Black Episcopal priest who has worked with the Black
community and the Party since coming to Oakland. We consider him
our chaplain. He was involved in civil rights in Mississippi in the
early 1960s, and he knows all about brutality and violence. During mv
trial he came often to the courtroom to lend his support.
Although people received me warmly, I was at first a symbol Our
relationship had changed. There was now an element of hero worship
that had not existed before I got busted. But I wanted our rapport to
get back to where it was before I went to jail, that is, a relationship
291
Revolutionary Suicide
based on face-to-face communication between people working together
for survival. I think their faith and trust in me was restored, although
perhaps it will never be the same again; the earlier close family tie
has been enlarged by an image of me created through publicity and
the media. So much had been written, so much said, that I was dis-
tanced from them; there was a slight estrangement. It would be over-
come.
All this time I was under immense pressure to give interviews, to
fill speaking engagements, to appear on talk shows and television
programs, but I accepted none of these for about six months. I even
received a brochure from some Hollywood outfit. It contained news-
Piper clippings about me and a letter saying, "You're star quality," or
something like that, which would have been amusing had it not been
.neli .in overt capitalist attempt to co-opt the revolution, Too many so-
uillt'il li'iidoi's of the movement have been made into celebrities and
tln'ii icvolutiotiary fervor destroyed by mass media. They become
I lollvwood objects and lose identification with the real issues. The
t c.i s 1 is lo transform society; only the people can do that — not heroes,
mil celebrities, not stars. A star's place is in Hollywood; the revolu-
tion, ur's place is in the community with the people. A studio is a place
where fiction is made, but the Black Panther Party is out to create non-
fietion. We are making revolution.
292
29
People who come out of prison can build up the countrv
Misfortune is a test of people's fidelity
Those who protest at injustice are people of true merit.
When the prison-doors are opened, the real dragon will fly out
HO chi minh. "Word-Play II," Prison Diary
Rebuilding
Hfe-and-Lthtues 6 Z7l ' ^ ^ invoIved ^ - the
, ne naicuJ ous charges concerning Alex RaokW U , • n
Part of an Establishment plot to push Bohhv 7 , 7 *"
a jail cell which thev hJu F ' t0 3 death sent ence or
formed. Afte Tf ,W ,„ S ^ '° d ° ^ Slnce the F ^ ^
^uer railing in Sacramento and Chicago tb P t?^ ue I
made its most serious attempt with th P , f' the Establishment
-on g and effective ^^^^^7^
^re were the Soiedad Brothers-Comrades George Jaton F^a
f^^^^S^J^ a.ong ,„ h elght
Lonnie MoL Ucas , w as charged with LlZl ^ 5 ™' * 8rren Kimb ™' and
*e killing of a New York Black Panther AW R , C ,° nSp,r \ C >' t0 "it murder in
Kimbro pleaded guiltv to murder in the 11 a'a^ °" ^ ^ 1969 " Sa ™ and
tenced to life im risonmen T ™ L ca w Told ? ?° f f RacWe >' ^ «e re sen-
murder and wa., given a prison term of twel , e?" % ° f ^P^cv to commit
Huggins and Bobby Seale', which wa he d en ^ ^ WaI ° f Eri ^
^ state declined to try them agl, ^m^ l^^el ' ^ ^
293
Revolutionary Suiiiih
Drumgo, and John (Muehelle -who were Hearing trial for their lives
on a trumped-up charge ol murdering a prison guard. The Party had
provided the initial hinds and support to get their defense committee
in operation, and we were working hard to give them greater support.
We were also helping the defense of Los Siete de la Raza, the seven
Chicanos who were awaiting trial in San Francisco on charges of kill-
ing a police officer. Mv own pending case seemed insignificant com-
pared with the pressures the Establishment was bringing to bear on
our noble warriors. I was facing only thirteen more years in jail, but
my comrades, every one of them, faced death.
A number of other Part)' matters also required action. When I got
out of prison in August, 1970, it was less than a month before the
preliminary session of the Revolutionary Constitutional Convention to
be held in Philadelphia over the Labor Day weekend. The second
session was scheduled for Thanksgiving weekend in Washington, D.C.
It had been Eldridge Cleaver's idea to hold these conventions. I was
never enthusiastic about them, but because the Central Committee of
l lie 1'aily went along with Eldridge, I followed their direction. The
pnipn.se of the conventions was to discuss the plight of Black people
and to write a new Constitution for the United States. I could not see
much point in spending time and effort writing a Constitution when
we had no power to implement it. Eldridge was then in Algeria, and
we spoke by telephone about this on several occasions; I pushed the
point of view that our most urgent commitment was to build a strong
base of community support behind Bobby and Ericka, as well as the
Soledad Brothers. Eldridge expressed some agreement with me, and
toward this goal we arranged for Kathleen Cleaver, who had great
drawing power, to return and speak at the Washington session. My
address at the Philadelphia rally would be my first major public appear-
ance since being released. People were expecting a lot of me, and I
worked hard on the speech.
In the meantime, the Philadelphia police were determined to pre-
vent the conference from taking place. A few days before it was
scheduled to begin, they raided the Black Panther Party headquarters
and arrested most of the comrades. In a strong show of unity, the
community came together within hours, reopened the offices, handled
the telephones, and went ahead with arrangements for the conference.
This community support was living proof that we can never bring
about the revolution without the people,
294
Rebuilding
On the other hand, I was disturbed by much of what I saw at the
Philadelphia session. I tried in my speech to make some contribution
to the peoples understanding and the advancement of their conscious-
ness. What I wanted to show was that Black people and other minori-
ties in this country had been betrayed by the American Constitution,
the legal foundation of government. I stressed that the United States
of America came into being at a time when the nation comprised a nar-
row strip of land on the eastern seaboard and whose population was
small and homogeneous both racially and culturally. The economic
system then was different, too— essentially agricultural. A small popula-
tion and fertile land meant that people were able to advance according
to their motivation and ability. In this way, democratic capitalism
flourished in the new nation. Then I went on to sav:
The following years were to see this new nation rapidlv develop into a
mulhhmbed giant. The new nation acquired land and spread from a nar-
row strip on the eastern seaboard to cover almost the entire continent. The
new nat.on acquired a population to fill this newly acquired land. This popu-
lation was drawn from the continents of Africa, Asia, Europe, and South
America. Thus a nation conceived by homogeneous people of a small num-
ber and in a small area grew into a nation of a heterogeneous people, com-
prising a large number and spread across an entire continent. This change
m the fundamental characteristics of the nation and its people substantially
changed the nature of American society. Furthermore, the social changes
were marked by economic changes. A rural and agricultural economv be-
came an urban and industrialized economy, as farming was replaced bv
manufacturing. The democratic capitalism of our early days became caught
up m a relentless drive to obtain profits until the selfish motivation for profit
eclipsed the unselfish principles of democracy. Thus 200 years later we have
an overdeveloped economy which is so infused with the need for profit that
we have replaced democratic capitalism with bureaucratic capitalism The
free opportunity of all men to pursue their economic ends has been replaced
by constraints (confinement) placed upon Americans by the large corpora-
tions which control and direct our economy. They have sought to increase
their profits at the expense of the people, and particularly at the expense of
the racial and ethnic minorities. . .
We find evidence for majority freedom and minority oppression in the
fact that even while the early settlers were proclaiming 'their freedom thev
were deliberately and systematically depriving Africans of their freedom. . .'.
Generation after generation of the majority group have been born thev
have worked, and they have seen the fruits of their labors in the life, liberty
295
Revolution/in/ Suitiilr
and happiness ol llieii i hililren ;iml grandchildren. Generation after genera-
tion of Hlark people in Ann'rira have been born, they have worked, and
thev have seen l)ir (mils nl llieii labors in I. lu: life, liberty, and happiness of
the children and gi .mdrhilcli en nl their oppressors, while their own descend-
ants wallow in the mire of poveily and deprivation, holding only to the hope
of change in the future. 'I'll is hope has sustained us for many years and has
led us to suffer the administrations of a corrupt government, At the dawn of
the twentieth century this hope led us to formulate a civil rights movement
in the belief that this government would eventually fulfill its promise to
Black people. We did not recognize, however, that any attempt to complete
the promise of an eighteenth-century revolution in the framework of a
twentieth-century government was doomed to failure. The descendants of
that small company of original settlers of this land are not among the common
people of today, they have become a small ruling class in control of a world-
wide economic system. The Constitution set up by their ancestors to serve
the people no longer does so, for the people have changed. The people of the
eighteenth century have become the ruling class of the twentieth century, and
the people of the twentieth century are the descendants of the slaves and dis-
possessed of the eighteenth eenturv. The Constitution set up to serve the
propli' of the eighteenth eenturv now serves the ruling class of the twentieth
i r'nhirv, and the people of today stand waiting for a foundation of their own
lilr. libri tv, and pursuit of happiness.
As [ talked, it seemed to me that the people were not really listen-
ing or even interested in what I had to say. Almost every sentence was
greeted with loud applause, but the audience was more concerned
with phrasemongering than with ideological development. I am not a
good public speaker — I tend to lecture and teach in a rather dull
fashion — but the people were not responding to my ideas, only to an
image, and although I was very excited by all the energy and enthu-
siasm I saw there, I was also disturbed by the lack of serious analytical
thought,
After Philadelphia, we tried to organize rallies across the country
in preparation for the Washington convention. We had been counting
on Kathleen Cleaver's return to organize these rallies in support of
Bobby and Ericka, since we knew that Kathleen could draw in people,
speak effectively, and give us the boost we needed. Then, for reasons
unfathomable to us at the time, Eldridge changed his mind and re-
fused to let her come. This was a real setback. We had announced that
Kathleen would be at the convention, but when Eldridge would not
296
Rebuilding
allow that, I tried to change the direction of the Washington meeting.
In an important way, the convention marked a turning point in the
Party's development. Instead of focusing on a new Constitution, we
concentrated on plans for building community-organizing programs. I
sent out a directive to all chapters and branches telling them to come
prepared to set up displays explaining community programs and to
urge people to sign up for them. Then, when the comrades returned
home, they would have a list of names of committed people who could
be organized.
For me, the theme of the convention in Washington was not a new
Constitution but organization for survival, and from that time on, we
began to refer to the Party community programs as survival programs.
The whole idea of the community programs had been developed by
Bobby Seale while I was in prison, and his brilliant organizing methods
had helped to establish them. The Breakfast for Children program was
set up first. Other programs— clothing distribution centers, liberation
schools, housing, prison projects, and medical centers— soon followed.
We called them "survival programs pending revolution," since we
needed long-term programs and a disciplined organization to carrv
them out. They were designed to help the people survive until their
consciousness is raised, which is only the first step in the revolution to
produce a new America. I frequently use the metaphor of the raft to
describe the survival programs. A raft put into service during a disaster
is not meant to change conditions but to help one get through a diffi-
cult time. During a flood the raft is a life-saving device, but it is only
a means of getting to higher and safer ground. So, too. with survival
programs, which are emergency services. In themselves thev do not
change social conditions, but they are life-saving vehicles until condi-
tions change.
The Washington convention could have been a great leap forward
but nothing worked out well. Howard University had agreed to host
the convention, but at the last minute the university withdrew its facili-
ties, and the comrades had to find another hall. Some churches made
space available, so we were able to hold our workshops and meetings
in them. But there was poor planning, poor co-ordination, and a de-
ficiency in skills needed to organize and execute such a gigantic under-
taking.
Another weakness was the diffuseness of goals among those who
297
Ravnlutiimnn/ Nin'n'r/r
came to the roiiwiiti r.s|ifri;i!ly among the whites. My goals were
different Irmn theirs. They had been drawn to the Party by Eldridge's
rhetoric, and their views had eome to influence too many of our activi-
ties. I made up my mind that we could not let white radicals define
the struggle for us; they knew too little about the Black experience and
life in Black communities. Deep into the violence of the revolution,
they wanted the Black Panthers to write a new Constitution, overthrow
the government by force, and implement it. When this did not come
about in Washington, we got critical letters claiming we were no
longer the vanguard of the movement. I paid no attention. In fact, we
were glad to be rid of the radicals because all they did was talk. Those
who understood the true nature of revolution stood with us.
The defection of both Eldridge Cleaver and the Party were summed
up in the shambles of the Washington convention. Cleaver was de-
manding that we act out his fantasies of instant power. In Philadelphia,
Ihc crowds had been overwhelmingly Black— they kept us down to
earth— but in Washington the white radicals' fantasies and those of
' leaver merged, and we, the all-too-human Black Panthers, could not
gratify (hem. In metaphysical streets, Cleaver and the infantile leftists
were waiting on corners for the revolution to come to them. We were
not able to hand down a manifesto like Moses on Sinai. Our grievous
error had been that for a moment in time we, too, had joined the
suicidal dance around the golden calf. The bad news from Washington,
D.C., the city of lies, was that the American Revolution had only
reached the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end.
In the months after my release I traveled from city to citv, meeting
comrades and doing what I could to organize committees for Ericka
and Bobby. In my travels I observed the work being done in dozens of
communities and saw evidence that the Black Panthers had built a
strong organization. But we needed to do more-much more. We had
the base now on which to construct a potent social force in the country.
But some of our leading comrades lacked the comprehensive ideology
needed to analyze events and phenomena in a creative, dynamic way.
We had tried to develop their understanding in political-education
classes. Now we needed a structure, and after discussion in the Central
Committee, we organized the Ideological Institute in Oakland in De-
cember, 1970. It was formed to train our more advanced comrades to
observe and define phenomena along lines set down by the Black
298
Rebuilding
one C0 " ld M "* "*
i-ades would be able to m l °PP°rtunity, other com-
-utions as they to^d ll^S^s ^™ ^
the advance of revolutionary thought The iZT ^ " f ° f
ceeded in providing the coLdest th an un ^ SUC "
materialism. About three hnnrlr^ u 1 Understandln g of dialectical
Meanwhile, our effort, on hilt < „ uf " * nd P hilM °pher,.
Erik»„, the rLLed J I !r * he 1 ™' Enk
ehology a( Ha, "d Hi, son Kal"! P '° " <°™<°?™<* F>-
co,, ge v„, ( „o Ugh ":";,o"o irs," ir,:^™* 1 '
four.ee.Me ,le„ t ? '"7^ *™ f " Ul, - v mOTb -
AS ,v, repeatedlv taLdTV u r ° d ">' S °' th « »">™'- At
"e»r rev„h, non> " , 1 ™fn d vi T "™™«°"- They had eo,„e to
«* »)«" g -ei «hS : ah ,„,r s r, i : n : t : ic ,h and t n r ,ofied
is without dignitv f-l^r, fk i ■ , aigmty . If one person
"o.-d.h,,,,,r„:L ;, t^rd i,r s s T e,hing *«■ E ' iks »
all relationship, He brourt, n u «™plex.ty of all i«„« a „ d
early day, „ s.od.n IZt T ? I"? * '° °™ dm ™8 »« >»'*
Lamed m„ ch (L e " h ^ TO, " S ' - bod,
pariy'rir;^ ctnrtiShie m >' - •
299
Revolutionary Suifidc
on one of his European trips, while I was still in prison. At first she
stayed in Europe to organize groups there but later moved to our Al-
gerian embassy under the direction of Eldridge Cleaver. Less than two
months after my release from prison. Eldridge sent her to Oakland to
work out of Central Headquarters, where she was assigned to handle
the details of my travel, speaking engagements, and the like. I found
her somewhat unreliable and several times considered sending her
back to Algiers, but Eldridge insisted she remain in Oakland.
In late 1970 she had married Michael "Cetawayo" Tabor, a Black
Panther from New York and one of the twenty-one defendants in that
circus the state called a conspiracy trial. Cetawayo was an effective
organizer and a good speaker, but he had suffered through some heavy
drug and prison scenes. He fell completely under Connie's spell.
When the meetings with Erikson came to an end, Connie and Ceta-
wayo disappeared, taking many of my personal papers with them. Of
(■Nurse, when Tabor jumped bail, this placed the other New York 21 in
[I'Dpardy, but more than that, I was puzzled about where they might
have grme. Connie was not a citizen and would have trouble staying in
[Re ( Iftijcd States; Cetawayo was a fugitive who could not travel easily
ElUtilde 'he country unless he went to Cuba or Algiers. I did not think
llirv would go to Cuba — they were not hard workers— and if they went
in Alp t'rs they would be right in our hands. But the Algerian possibility
Marled me thinking. After considering the alternatives, I began to sus-
pect that something was wrong between Eldridge Cleaver in Algiers
and the Central Committee of the Party in Oakland. But I said nothing;
without enough evidence to be certain, I decided to wait and see.
In the meantime, a big rally was planned for Oakland on March 5,
1971, to kick off a large-scale effort in support of all political prisoners,
with the main focus on the trial of Bobby and Ericka in New Haven.
The rally, called the Intercommunal Day of Solidarity, was scheduled
for the Oakland auditorium. Its keynote speaker would be Kathleen
Cleaver, with musical entertainment provided by The Grateful Dead
On April 2, 1969, twenty-one New York Black Panthers were arrested and
charged with conspiring to bomb several New York police stations and department
stores, the New York Botanical Gardens, and the New Haven Railroad. Bail was
set at $100,000 each, and the defendants spent ten months in jail awaiting trial. On
May 13, 1971, after a trial that lasted eight months, the thirteen defendants who
stood trial, including two who fled to Algeria, were unanimously acquitted of all
twelve counts of the indictment.
300
Rebuilding
and The Lumpen, a Black Panther group whose primary purpose was
not entertainment but political education through music and song. We
wanted to attract a broad cross-section of the Bay Area community.
While we made preparations, I talked a number of times with El-
dridge by telephone, and although we had some disagreement about
strategy and tactics, we did agree that the rally should come off as
planned. However, doubt grew in our minds whether Kathleen would
show up. We had good reason for uncertainty; at the Revolutionary
Constitutional Convention in Washington the previous November, she
had failed to appear. But when I expressed these doubts to Eldridge,
he assured me that Kathleen would be there.
In addition to the Oakland rail}', we were planning a series of meet-
ings across the country featuring Kathleen and local speakers. These
rallies were meant to attract people whom we could organize into
groups to work for the various trials as well as participate in the survival
programs the Party was developing.
In order to publicize the Intercommunal Day of Solidarity, I had
agreed to appear on a local TV talk show. My appearance would be a
means of using the oppressor's media to carry our message to the
people. About three hours before the show, I had an idea and called
Eldridge to discuss it with him. The TV show was one on which people
called in to ask questions, but I suggested a reversal of this procedure.
The show's host would call Eldridge in Algeria, talk about the rally on
the air, and announce that Kathleen was coming to speak. I knew this
would arouse interest and increase attendance. Best of all, it would be
done at the expense of the media. The station was enthusiastic. When
I told Eldridge of the plan, he liked it, too, and said he would be pre-
pared for the call. When I arrived at the station that morning, I felt
optimistic. We were getting the best local publicity; a large crowd
would attend the rally; we had begun to build a strong base for our
work to free political prisoners.
Then the call to Eldridge went through, and the world turned upside
down. At first I could not believe what he was doing. He launched into
Party business — and not only Party business but Central Committee
business, beginning with the Central Committee's expulsion of Connie
Matthews Tabor, Cetawayo Tabor, the New York 21, and Elmer
"Geronimo" Pratt, a Black Panther from Los Angeles. All these Black
Panthers were guilty of serious offenses — actions that had jeopardized
301
Revolutionary Suicidi'
other comrades and the Party. The New York 21 had written an open
letter to the Weathermen saying that they felt the leadership of the
Party had lost its revolutionary fervor and that the Weathermen were
the true vanguard of the revolution. That was all right with us if they
wanted to take that position, but the Central Committee decided that
with that statement the New York 21 had resigned from the Party.
Expulsion was simply a Party recognition of that fact. In the other
cases, there was also ample evidence to justify the actions of the Cen-
tral Committee.
Now, in this public setting, before thousands of viewers, Eldridge
chose to disagree with the actions of the Central Committee. However,
he did not attack me; he attacked David Hilliard, the Chief of StaE.
Eldridge accused David of having allowed the Party to fall apart and
said that we had expelled many loyal comrades without sufficient
cause. I disagreed with him and defended David. David had done a
good job of sustaining the Party while I was in jail, often working with
scant support, yet keeping things together from coast to coast. In my
opinion, if anyone was at fault, it was me. Whatever wrongs there were
in the Part}-, I said, I took full responsibility.
Very angry about Eldridge's stunt, I nevertheless kept calm, and
after Eldridge and I finished talking, I answered questions from listen-
ers. But my mind was no longer on the show. I was trying to figure out
why Eldridge had pulled this act in public, particularly when just
three hours earlier he had agreed to participate. What was going on?
Even as I began to understand, as details fell into place in my mind, I
still believed it was a contradiction that could be handled within the
Part)' structure. It had not occurred to me that Eldridge might want to
undermine the Party.
On leaving the TV studio, I went straight to a pay phone and placed
a call to Eldridge. I had been cool in public, but I was seething inside,
and I wanted him to know my real feelings. When we were connected,
I let him have it: he had shown no concern for the political prisoners,
and on this occasion, when we had an unusual opportunity to make a
major move to organize behind them, he had gone on an individualistic
trip, talking madness. Bobby's New Haven trial was just beginning; we
had no idea what the outcome would be, yet Eldridge had shown com-
plete disregard for him and all others facing trial. When I finished, I
flew to Boston, and there I called Eldridge again. What I did not know
302
Rebuilding
when I made those two calls was that I was not talking to a man but to
a tape recorder. Eldridge taped my calls and then released them to
NBC in New York, which played my "private, privileged" remonstrance
over the American network. The Minister of Information had set me
up. He was committing reactionary suicide and trying to take me down
with him.
It soon became clear that Eldridge had organized a plot to subvert
the work of the Party and sacrifice Bobby and Ericka to the Establish-
ment. He had done this by questioning Party ideology and by attempt-
ing to turn a number of Black Panthers against the Party and the Cen-
tral Committee. Immediately after these public charges against Hilliard.
the key members in four Black Panther branches in New York and
one in New Jersey publicly announced that they supported Eldridge
and thereby resigned from the Party. Obviously this campaign had been
planned well in advance. The perpetrators were only waiting for a
propitious time to carry it out. The final evidence of the plot came when
Connie Matthews Tabor and Michael Cetawayo Tabor turned up in
Algiers. Everything pointed to the fact that Eldridge had sent Connie
here in October of 1970 with subversion in mind, and it finally came
to pass in February, 1971. Eldridge's defection was now out in the
open.
The next few weeks were tense, but we went ahead with our prep-
arations for the Intercommunal Day of Solidarity on March 5. I was
now to be the keynote speaker. I knew that everybody at the rally-
would expect me to say something about Cleaver in answer to all the
charges he was making against us through transatlantic interviews. But
when the night of the rally arrived, I decided against mentioning him
and gave a brief address with no direct reference. The rally was a
great success. It raised people's awareness of the survival programs
and brought increased support for political prisoners. More and more
people from the Black community were joining us in our determination
that political oppression, imprisonment, and even death would not
deter us from our efforts to free our imprisoned brothers and sisters.
The spring and summer following the rally brought increased
momentum into my life. The survival programs, the Ideological In-
stitute, the reorganization of the Party required my full attention. And
even t s — both tragic and joyful — rushed in on one another during those
months. At the end of May, Bobby and Ericka, who had been defended
303
licvulutionary Suicide
by Charles Garry, were acquitted of the false charges brought against
them by the state of Connecticut. After a brief delay, Bobby was re-
leased, and he and Ericka returned to Oakland to resume their work
in the community. Seeing Bobby again was a moving experience. We
had not been together on the streets of Oakland since August, 1967, in
the early, uncertain days of the Black Panther Part}'. Now, almost four
years later, we were once again on the block with our comrades. We
had gone through a great deal of danger and pain during those years,
but we had survived, stronger and more committed than ever. Every-
thing we had suffered had been worth the price. And during that time
the Parts - had grown from a local group to a network of branches and
chapters in North America and abroad. Many of our noble warriors
had been cut down, and other early members had shown themselves
nimble to withstand the pressures of a protracted revolutionary struggle,
l.ml we were happy to be together again, united in our goals for our
people.
The Establishment, however, was determined to keep us on the
defensive. The district attorney of Alameda County began his moves
lo have me tried a second time. Even more serious were his efforts to
railroad Chief of Staff David Hilliard into prison on the trumped-up
charges that had come from the shoot-out on April 6, 1968, when Bobby
Ilutlon had been murdered. The charge: assault with a deadly weapon
against a police, officer "known to be in pursuit of his duty." David had
been arrested that night, although there was no evidence that he had
a weapon or even that he was at the scene of the shoot-out. Yet the
district attorney who conducted his prosecution got the kind of jury he
wanted (as they usually do) and was able to lead them into convicting
David on these charges, even though the district attorney himself could
not prove that David had a weapon. Once again the Black Panther
Party got the kind of "justice" we have come to expect. In July David
was sentenced to serve one to ten years in the state prison and was
quickly whisked off to Vacaville, as I had been three years earlier,
During the five years since the Partv had been formed, it always
seemed that time was measured not in days or months or hours but
by the movements of comrades and brothers in and out of prison and
by the dates of hearings, releases, and trials. Our lives were regulated
not by the ordinary tempo of daily events but by the forced clockwork
of the judicial process. No sooner had David begun serving his term
304
Rebuilding
than we turned our attention to the upcoming trial of George Jackson,
who had been falsely charged with killing a prison guard at San Quen-
tin. His trial was scheduled for August 23. Two days before it was to
begin, on August 21, while attempting to save his brothers in a San
Quentin cell block from being massacred by guards, he was shot and
killed by his enemies. He had fulfilled his own prophecy: "I know that
they will not be satisfied until they've pushed me out of this existence
altogether."
305
30
The Black Panther is our brother and son, the one
who wasn't afraid.
ceobce jackson, Soledad Brother
Fallen Comrade
George Jackson had genius. Genius is rare enough and should
he treasured, but when genius is combined in a Black man with revolu-.
tionary passion and vision, the Establishment will cut him down. Com-
rade Jackson understood this. He knew his days were numbered and
was prepared to die as a true believer in revolutionary suicide. For
eleven years he insisted on remaining free in a brutal prison system. All
along he resisted the authorities and encouraged his brothers in prison
to join him. The state retaliated: parole w-as continually refused; solitary
confinement was imposed on him for seven years; threats on his life
were frequent — from guards, from inmates who called themselves
"Hitler's Helpers," from "knife thrusts and pick handles of faceless
sadistic pigs." And finally they murdered him.
In the months before his death everything began to close in. He was
one of the few prisoners who w-as shackled and heavily guarded for
his infrequent trips to the visitors' room. Attempts on his life became
almost daily occurrences. But he never gave in or retreated. Prison was
the crucible that shaped his spirit, and George often used the words of
Ho Chi Minh to describe his resistance; "Calamity has hardened me
and turned my mind to steel."
I knew him like a brother. At first, I knew him only spiritually,
through his writing and his legend in the prison system, when I was
306
Fallen (Unnuidr
at the Penal Colony and he was at Soledad. Then, not long ai'tn my
arrival, I received through the prison grapevine a request from Grnri;.'
to join the Black Panther Party. It was readily granted. George wns
made a member of the People's Revolutionary Army, with the rank
of General and Field Marshal, For the next three years we were in con-
stant communication by means of messages carried by friends and
lawyers and inmates transferred from one prison to another. Despite the
restrictions of the prison system, we managed to transmit our messages
on paper and on tapes. Among George's contributions to the Party were
articles he wrote for The Black Panther newspaper, which furthered our
revolutionary theory and provided inspiration for all the brothers. In
February, 1971, I received this letter from him:
2/21/71
Comrade Huey,
Things are quiet here now, tonight we have discipline and accord, to-
morrow all may fly apart again — but that's us.
I have two articles that I would like to be put in the paper, one following
the other by a week. The one on Angela first. Then if you approve, I would
like to contribute something to the paper every week or whenever you have
space for me.
If yes, let me know if there is any area in particular you would like me to
cover (comment on).
Then do I comment as observer or participant?
One favor — please don't let anyone delete the things I say or change
them around, I don't need an editor, unless what I say is not representative
of the Party Line, don't let anyone change a word. When I make an ideologi-
cal error of course correct it to fit the party's position. And don't let them
shorten or condense; if something is too long, part one-part two it.
If you want to use me to say nasty things about those who deserve it, it
may be best for me to comment as an observer, that way less contradictions
between yourself and people you may have to work with.
You told that you and I had a "misunderstanding" once but that it
was cleared up, When was it that we misunderstood each other?
Be very careful of messages or any word that has supposed to have come
from me. I really don't recall any misunderstanding.
People lie for many reasons.
Try to memorize my handwriting, that is how all messages will come in
the future (if we have a future).
Did you know that Angela and I were married a while back? And I had
307
Revolutionary Suicide
almost pulled her all the way into our camp, just before Eldridge made that
statement?
I had done so well in fact that CP. tried to cut our contacts, attacked
my sanity in little whispers and looks in conversing with her, and cut off my
paid subscription to their two newspapers.
Strange, that they would be afraid of the F.B.I., and not afraid of the
Cat. Perhaps they've reached an understanding. Some of them anyway.
Is CP.? Man, whats happening with her. She has no control at all
of her mouth. Or ego.
Arrange for a good contact or write and seal messages with a thumb-
print. I have ideas I'd like to leave with you all.
Thanks Brother for helping us. Beautiful, hard, disciplined brothers in
here, I'd like to deliver them to you someday.
Ceorge
In the last three years of his life Comrade Jackson felt sustained
mid supported by the Black Panther Party. He had struggled alone for
so long to raise the consciousness of Black inmates, and his example
enc ouraged thousands who were weaker and less intrepid than he. But
the price lie paid in alienation and reprisals was fearsome. Within the
Party he was no longer alone; he became part of a burgeoning and in-
vincible revolutionary liberation movement. In his second book, Blood
in My Eye, he expressed this faith: "The Black Panther Party is the
largest and most powerful political force existing outside establishment
politics. It draws this power from the people. It is the people's natural,
political vanguard."
George asked the Party to publish his first book, Soledad Brother,
but in the difficult negotiations between go-betweens and without di-
rect contact, the arrangements fell through. To make sure this mistake
would never happen again, he left his estate and all his writings to the
Party. More important, he bequeathed us his spirit and his love.
George's funeral was held in Oakland on August 28, 1971 — exactly
one week after his murder — at St. Augustine's Episcopal Church, pas-
tored by Father Earl Neil. A crowd of about 7,000 friends gathered to
pay their last respects to our fallen comrade, and the Black Panther
Party had a large contingent of comrades on hand to handle the crowd
and protect the Jackson family. I arrived at the church shortly before
the funeral cortege. The second-floor sanctuary was empty, but from
the window I could see the crowd stretching for more than a block in
308
Fallen Comrade
each direction, filling every available space and closing off the streets
to motor traffic.
A number of Black Panthers sat talking quietly downstairs. Oc-
casionally they relieved the comrades who were controlling the crowd
and directing traffic outside. The children from the Intercommunal
Youth Institute were there, and although they had been in the building
since early morning, they did not complain of weariness. The children
felt the loss of George deeply; when they had learned of his death
the previous week, all of them had written messages of condolence to
his mother. They loved George, and in their faces I could see their
determination to grow up and fulfill his dreams of liberation.
Tensions were high. We had received many threats the previous
week, from prison guards, from police, and from many others, stating
that the funeral would not be held, and if it was, there would be cause
for more funerals of Black Panthers. We were ready for anything. The
comrades were angry about the threats, and they were righteously angry
about the continued oppression of the poor and Black people who live
in this land. You could see it in their faces, in their measured, firm
strides, in their clenched fists, and in their voices as they greeted the
hearse with shouts of "Power to the People" and "Long Live the Spirit
of George Jackson."
When the funeral cortege arrived, Bobby and I prepared to meet the
people in it as they entered the door of the church. It was the first time
Bobbv and I had shared a public platform in over four years, but
there was no cause for rejoicing. We said nothing to each other; we
knew only too well what the other was thinking.
As the casket bearing the body of Comrade George was brought
into the sanctuary, a song was playing — Nina Simone singing "I Wish
I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free." Inside the church the walls
were ringed with Black Panthers carrying shotguns. George had said
that he wanted no flowers at his funeral, only shotguns. In honoring
his request we were also protecting his family and all those who were
dedicated to carrying on in his spirit. Any person who entered that
sanctuary with the purpose of starting some madness would know that
he did not stand a chance of going very far. In death, even as in life,
George thought about the best interests of his companions.
Father Neil made a short but powerful statement about the lesson
of George Jackson's death, that Black people would have to get off
309
Revolutionary Suicide
their knees and take their destiny in their own hands. Bobby read some
of the many messages from around the world, Elaine Brown sang "One
time's too much to tell any man that he's not free," and I delivered the
eulogy, which went in part:
George Jackson was my hero. He set a standard for prisoners, political
prisoners, for people. He showed the love, the strength, the revolutionary
fervor characteristic of any soldier for the people. He inspired prisoners,
whom I later encountered, to put his ideas into practice and so his spirit be-
came a living thing. Today I say that although George's body has fallen, his
spirit goes on, because his ideas live. And we will see that these ideas stay
alive, because they'll be manifested in our bodies and in these young Pan-
thers' bodies, who are our children. So it's a true saying that there will be
involution from one generation to the next. This was George's legacy, and
he will go on, he will go on into immortality, because we believe that the
people will win, we know the people will win, as they advance, generation
upon generation.
VVliat kind of standard did George Jackson set? First, he was a strong
nun, without fear, determined, full of love, strength, and dedication to the
people's cause. Me lived a life that we must praise. No matter how he was
oppressed, no matter how wrongly he was done, he still kept the love for the
people'. And this is why he felt no pain in giving up his life for the people's
cause. . . ,
Even after his death, George Jackson is a legendary figure and a hero.
Even the oppressor realizes this. To cover their murder they say that George
Jackson killed five people, five oppressors, and wounded three in the space
of thirty seconds. You know, sometimes I like to overlook the fact that this
would be physically impossible. But after all George Jackson is my hero.
And I would like to think that it was possible; I would be very happy think-
ing that George Jackson had the strength because that would have made him
superman. (Of course, my hero would have to be a superman.) And we will
raise our children to be like George Jackson, to live like George Jackson and
to fight for freedom as George Jackson fought for freedom.
George's last statement, the example of his conduct at San Quentin on
that terrible day, left a standard for political prisoners and for the prisoner
society of racist, reactionary America. He left a standard for the liberation
armies of the world. He showed us hosv to act. He demonstrated how the un-
just would be criticized by the weapon. And this will certainly be true, be-
cause the people will taJ<e care of that. George also said once that the oppres-
sor is very strong and he might beat him down, he might beat us down to
our very knees, he might crush us to the ground, but it will be physically im-
possible for the oppressor to go on. At some point his legs will get tired, and
310
Fallen Comrade
when his legs get tired, then George Jackson and the people will tear his
kneecaps off. . . .
So we will be very practical. We won't make statements and believe the
things the prison officials say — their incredible stories about one man killing
five people in thirty seconds. We will go on and live very realistically. There
will be pain and much suffering in order for us to develop. But even in our
suffering, I see a strength growing. I see the example that George set living
on. We know that all of us will die someday. But we know that there are two
kinds of death, the reactionary death and the revolutionary death. One death
is significant and the other is not. George certainly died in a significant way,
and his death will be very heavy, while the deaths of the ones that fell that
day in San Quentin will be lighter than a feather. Even those who support
them now will not support them in the future, because we're determined to
change their minds. We'll change their minds or else in the people's name
we'll have to wipe them out thoroughly, wholly, absolutely, and completely.
ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE.
All words are inadequate to express the pain one feels over a fallen
comrade. But in a poem my brother Melvin came closer than anyone
in voicing our feelings about the loss of George Jackson:
WE CALLED HIM THE GENERAL
The sky is blue,
Today is clear and sunny.
The house that George once
lived in headed for the
grave,
While the Panther spoke
of the spirit.
I saw a man move catlike
across the rooftops,
Glide along the horizons,
Casting no shadow,
only chains into the sea,
using his calloused hands
and broken feet to
smash and kick down
barriers.
The angels say his name
is George Lester Jackson —
El General.
311
Rcvohttionan/ Sulfide
All the people went home to
their hovels,
He to the world of gods,
heroes, tall men, giants.
He went like the rushing
wind, the rolling tide;
The thunder's roar,
The lightning's flash;
Smashing all challengers
and devils in his path,
While caressing the leaves,
sand and sky.
312
31
That Justice is a blind goddess
Is a thing to which we black are wise:
Her bandage hides two festering sores
That once perhaps were eyes.
langston hughes, "Justice"
Surviving
Shortly after David Hilliard was incarcerated, jury selection
began for my second trial. The same problems in selecting an impartial
and fair jury faced Charles Garry once again. One of the persons ques-
tioned for my panel had just served on David's jury. Under oath he
stated that he knew nothing about the Black Panther Party and its
leaders. When it was pointed out that he had just convicted David Hil-
liard, he said he did not know David was a Party leader. It was clear
the prosecution was out to get a hanging jury.
Being tried a second time on the same charges was a strange experi-
ence, a combination of suspense and di\a vu; most of the time I was
bored by what seemed a stale rerun of a familiar and flawed drama.
It was just another charade to justify their attempts to put me
back in state prison for another thirteen years. The major difference
between the two trials was that this time I was out on bail, which meant
that during the evenings I could conduct Party business. Also, I could
not be found guilty of a more serious offense than the one I had been
convicted of the first time, voluntary manslaughter. Lowell Jensen,
the first prosecutor in the first case, had become district attorney, and
an assistant named Donald Whyte was arguing for the prosecution. He
was no match for Charles Garry, but it did not matter, anyway, because
all he had to do was follow the script from the first trial.
313
lunxilutinnary Suicide
The trial opened and moved along, with most of the same set of
witnesses testifying. Once again, the prosecution leaned heavily on the
testimony of Officer Heanes, and during Charles Garry's cross-examina-
tion of him, the first major surprise of the trial came, one that said a
great deal about our opponents. During his questioning of Heanes,
Garry was making the basic point that when I was ordered out of the
car by Officer Frey, I was carrying only my criminal evidence lawbook.
The book had my name written in it, in my own handwriting, and my
blood was all over its pages. It had been a very important piece of evi-
dence! in the first trial, for it countered the prosecution charge that I
had curried a gun that night. Garry turned to the court clerk and asked
for the book, which had been entered into evidence in the first trial.
The clerk replied that it had been "lost." For a moment I could not be-
lieve ,ny cars, but I quickly realized that they were serious. They actu-
ally did not have the book. How could such a major piece of defense
evidence disappear? Their explanation was that when the Appellate
Court reviewed the trial and the evidence, they had taken everything
related to the case, and somewhere between the Appellate Court and
I he Alameda County Court House the book had been lost, although all
the other exhibits were available. My second trial, which had at first
seemed just a charade, now appeared to be turning into a circus.
Although he claimed to be "upset" by the "loss" of the book, the
prosecutor was not too convincing. He offered a photograph of it to be
entered into evidence and generously stipulated that the photograph
was a facsimile of my book and had indeed been a part of defense evi-
dence in the first trial. But a photograph is not a book. The prosecution
had a witness on the stand who said that I had turned and started
firing at two policemen on October 28, yet the piece of evidence that
disproved this claim, the only object I was carrying that night, was
missing. And now they wanted to replace it with a facsimile. The jury
could not see my bloodstains on the pages; they could not read my
name on the flyleaf; and they could not see where I had underlined the
relevant portions of the criminal code about reasonable cause for arrest,
the section I always read to police and citizens during our encounters.
Charles Garry protested this loss of crucial defense evidence and asked
for a mistrial. It was denied.
Then the trial went from charade to farce. The state had still another
stunt to pull, and it came the next day when a squad of plain-clothes
Surviving
men escorted a timid and very frightened man into court— Dell Ross.
It had not occurred to us that he would be called as a witness in the
second trial, because his credibility had been so thoroughly destroyed in
the first. But we should have known better. Dell Ross appeared out of
nowhere, well, not exactly out of nowhere, since he related how the
prosecution had sequestered him in another state and brought him in
for this trial— just as they had done with Henry Grier. I suspect that
Ross had been pushed around and threatened, because he was very
fearful. The papers referred to him as an "ex-motorist," in reference to
his explanation that he had "been traveling" since the first trial.
On the stand Ross said what was expected of him. He testified that
he had lied in the first trial and then went on to give the testimony that
he had offered before the grand jury. After listening to his admission
that he had perjured himself in the first trial, the court was nonetheless
agreeable to his placing his testimony in evidence. Yet anybody who
saw that intimidated soul meekly agreeing to the questions of the prose-
cutor would have had trouble taking his testimony seriously. I marveled
that they had the gall to put him on.
At first I felt sorry for him all over again, but I soon became angry
with the prosecutor for staging such a ridiculous farce and calling it a
trial. I was looking forward to the moment when Charles Garry would
go to work on Ross in his cross-examination. But because the district
attorney had not told us that Ross would be called to the stand, Garry-
was unprepared to question him. He asked for a recess to return to
San Francisco and get the tape and transcript of the interview he had
held with Ross before the first trial. This evidence was extremely im-
portant because it demonstrated what an unreliable witness Ross was
and cast doubt on his testimony. But the judge denied this reasonable
request and ordered him to proceed with his questioning of the witness,
At this point, I could hold back my anger no longer. I felt that a
cruel injustice was being done to us, and the need to make my views
known was too strong to be overcome by the protocol of the court-
room. I stood up and declared that the trial would not continue un-
less they gave us time to prepare a proper cross-examination of Dell
Ross. The defense was justified in asking for time, I declared, particu-
larly in light of the fact that the day before an important piece of de-
fense evidence had been confiscated by the state. Now they refused
us an hour's recess to secure critical information, although the prosecu-
314
315
Ih'volutionary Suicide
tor was routinely granted such delays. The courtroom was tense as I
went on and told them that I had stood between "the ignorance of my
own people and the violence of the state with a lawbook in my hand,
and now you have 'lost' it." I told them to take me back to jail. Turning
to the angry crowd, I urged them to be calm. "If they touch me, you
know what to do," I said, "but be disciplined now." The people were
beautiful and remained in place until I told them to leave the court-
room. Then they congregated in the hall outside and refused to clear
the building, so I went out of the courtroom into the hall, where the
police were beginning to gather their forces. It was obvious that they
wanted a mass arrest so that we would be caught in a net of charges,
bail, and trials. Realizing that they ought to clear the building, I told
them to go, that I could deal with the state and serve time for this.
They left quietly.
Then, amid the general confusion, I went back into the courtroom
and approached Dell Ross on the witness stand. The poor brother's
eyes were wild with fear. "Why are you sitting there, brother?" I asked
him. "Are you afraid?" A detective interrupted and told him not to listen
to me, but I continued. "Why do you obey him when he tells you not
to speak? I don't hate you; I love you, brother." The police saw that
my words were having an effect on him, so they took him away.
When the courtroom was cleared, Garry left for his office in San
Francisco. My plan had worked. I had recessed the trial, and now
Garry would have time to check his office. Everything was under con-
trol, even though there were police ever%"where and the judge did not
seem to know what was going on. I went upstairs to the jail and told
the guards to open my cell, but they wanted me to sign papers admit-
ting myself back into jail, thus revoking my bail. I refused to sign any-
thing. "Just put me in jail," I said. They opened a cell for me and
said they would wait a few hours while Garry looked for the transcript,
but if, after that, I did not sign the papers, they would kick me out of
the jail. I lay down in the cell and fell asleep.
Garry searched thoroughly for the tape and the transcript of his in-
terview with Dell Ross in 1968, but he could not find them. The office
had been burglarized a few weeks before, and the Ross evidence was
among the items that had been stolen. So, empty-handed but not dis-
couraged, he returned to Oakland, and the trial resumed with his cross-
examination of Ross, We need not have worried, Even without the
316
Surviving
transcript, Ross was such a strange witness that his credibility was de-
stroyed all over again. First, he admitted to the court that he had been
lying in the testimony he had given only an hour before. He had been
guilty of perjury not merely once or twice, but seventeen times. Second,
he admitted that he was afraid of the district attorney and everyone else
in the courtroom — the judge, the jurors, everybody. As if this were not
enough, Ross then asked the judge's permission to address a question to
the court, and the judge granted his request. There was a moment's
silence. Then, looking out into the courtroom, Ross said, "Is there
anybody here who believes in the truth? Would you raise your hand?"
This was such a bizarre development that the entire courtroom sat
stunned. No one moved or spoke except the district attorney, who raised
his hand and said, "Mr. Ross, I believe in the truth." The judge leaned
over and told Whyte to put his hand down. Then Dell Ross continued,
"Because I don't know what the truth is myself."
With that, Ross's effectiveness as a witness was demolished. I was
sorry to see him so dehumanized, for he seemed to me living proof
of what American society can do to oppressed and poor people. A
despicable abuse of power had intimidated a weak man, a man who
had little to lose, but who was terrified to let go of that. The whole pat-
tern of his life had taught him to fear and defer to those who control
society's institutions. At last, faced with a crucial test that resembled
all the earlier small, humiliating choices in his life, he had no resources
to help him resist. He gave in again, and his defeat ended in misery
and shame.
After this thunderbolt, everybody needed a respite, and the court re-
cessed for the weekend. Later that day, thinking about what had hap-
pened to Ross and how the prosecution had manipulated him, I had an
idea. What I planned to do would certainly end the trial and might even
send me back to jail, but I felt it would be an important political state-
ment. When the trial resumed the next Monday morning, I would stand
up again and announce that I was making a citizen's arrest of the prose-
cutor for aiding and abetting a felony, to wit, the perjured testimony
of Dell Ross. Then I would ask the judge to assist me in making this
arrest of the prosecutor. Since the judge would undoubtedly refuse to
do so, I would then turn to the jury and ask them to assist me in making
a citizen's arrest of the prosecutor and judge. My action would demon-
strate to the public that it is difficult for an ordinary citizen to get
317
Revolutionary Suiritlr
i
i
justice in the courts when those who are trying him break the law to get
him convicted. There is no recourse but to appeal to the people's sense
of justice. Such a political message would have a strong impact on the
consciousness of the people.
My lawyers were skeptical, but they agreed to do the legal research
on my plan, since I wanted a solid legal foundation for what I was about
to do. However, after reading the law, they told me it was not possible
to make a citizen's arrest of a district attorney or judge. They were
officers of the court, and only a grand jury could indict them. I aban-
doned the ploy, although still convinced I had a good point. What
other avenue was open when law enforcers could break the law with
impunity while ordinary citizens have no defense against them? If it
had been possible to arrest the district attorney and judge, I might
have had to go back to jail, but a strong point about the need for revolu- j
tionarv justice would have been made.
The remainder of the trial was uneventful. The same ballistics ex-
perts testified about the same things, and it became even more boring i
with repetition. This time our defense was much shorter than during
I he first, trial. I took the stand first and told the truth about the incident.
Prosecutor Whyte then cross-examined me, performing a lot of court-
room antics in the process, but he was not too successful in his attempts
to undermine my testimony. I did not budge an inch. He lacked the
polish and skill of Lowell Jensen, and, as a result, our exchange was
neither challenging nor stimulating.
The jurv deliberated for what seemed a long time in view of the ;
fact that this was a second trial and there were fewer charges. The
longer the deliberations dragged on the more confident I became that
someone was holding out for acquittal. Finally, the jury filed back into
court and told the judge that they were hopelessly deadlocked, eleven
for conviction and one for acquittal. The judge declared a mistrial
and dismissed them. I would have to face yet another trial.
During the third trial everything really went our way. It was the
same tired old show all over again — -Prosecutor Donald Whyte, Herbert
Heanes, Henry Grier. and Dell Ross, and their supporting cast. How-
ever, the whole scene had become more and more Ka f kaesque. The
script did not run the same way, and the first evidence that the plot
was changing in our favor came when Officer Heanes forgot his lines.
All through the first and second trials Heanes had said that Gene
Surviving
McKinney and I were the only ones at the scene of the incident lie.
sides himself and Frey. Then, in the third trial, he said that he remem-
bered another person at the scene, a man who had on a light tan jacket
but who was not the passenger. This third man came to light while he
was being cross-examined by Garry, and when Heanes realized that he
had forgotten his script, he became confused and dropped his head in
shame. Shortly after that, when the court took a recess and the jury
filed out, the district attorney grabbed Heanes by the collar and scolded
him in the open courtroom. Hcanes's memory slip had changed every-
thing, and I knew then we would win this one in spite of the testimony
of Henry Grier.
A third man. Had Heanes harbored the third man in his memory
all this time? Had an amnestic curtain lifted for this policeman who had
never been the same since that night? Was the third man the real
killer of Frey whom Heanes had covered up for all these years? Had
the state given up, and was the introduction of the third man their
way out? The questions were academic now, the state's motives and
conspiracies banal and irrelevant.
When it came time for the defense to present its case, Garrv was
ready with a special surprise for the prosecution: he was going to dis-
prove the entire testimony of Henry Grier. Our surprise had been
carefully prepared during the first and second trials, and now we were
ready to bring it out. Henry Grier had never been at the scene of the
October 28 shooting.
During Garry's cross-examinations of the prosecution witnesses,
especially the police who were there that morning, he had been careful
always to ask about the location of and get a description of every person
and every object within a radius of sixty yards from the scene of the
shooting. He had asked each policeman to describe everything he had
observed when he arrived, Not one policeman would say he saw a bus.
Why? Because there was no bus. None of them was willing to perjure
himself, even though all of them were willing to let the bus driver com-
mit perjury.
Charles Garry called to the stand the one man who was able to
verify Grier's route and time schedules the night of the incident — the
supervisor for the bus company. We had wanted the supervisor to
testify in the earlier trials, but we were also afraid that he might lie
and support the perjury of Grier. Still, we wondered why the prosecu-
318
319
Rcvolutioniin/ Sun n/e
turn had not b ^li! m I lit- timet .mil supervisor to back up Grier's
story. We war Mill . .iiiiinir. about using his testimony during the
second (rial, hut we hn^an to gather all the evidence to the effect that
in the spare of sixty yards in everv diveetion no policeman had seen a
bus. In the first trial we were even afraid to bring in these measure-
ments because w<- thought they might spring the supervisor on us, so
we waited and waited, making an airtight case against Grier before
we finally discredited his testimony.
Grier had testified that he was within ten feet of the whole incident,
that he had driven up in his bus and braked very near to the parked
automobiles, and had seen the shooting clearly. With a sixty-foot bus so
elo.se to the scene, it would be difficult for a policeman to miss it, and
vet not one of them testified to seeing it. When we became sure of our
evidence, we called in the bus superintendent, and he testified that
aeinidiiig to the company records of the route Grier followed and
( aier's own tune schedule, it was impossible for Grier to have been at
Ins checkpoints and also at the scene of the shooting. According to the
supervisor's records, Grier must have been at least one and a half to
two miles away at the time of the incident. Thus the bus supervisor
backed up the police who testified for the prosecution: there was no
bus on the scene.
The prosecution's case was steadily growing weaker. First Ross, now
Grier. This time the jury deadlocked 6-6, and the judge finally had to
declare another mistrial. I was summoned to appear in court again on
December 15 to have the date set for a fourth trial, but I felt sure the
charges would be dropped because the prosecution's main witnesses
were no longer credible. I was right.
At the hearing on December 15, Lowell Jensen appeared in court.
I had not seen him since my bail hearing during the summer of 1970.
After the judge opened the proceedings, Jensen rose to speak, saying
that he had never thought he would see the day when he would be in
court asking for a dismissal of my case. The judge looked at him. "Are
you asking for a dismissal in the interest of justice?" he asked, using the
proper legal terminology. Jensen replied, "No, it's not in the interest
of justice, because it's not just. I didn't think I would ever have to say
these words, but I think the case should be dismissed."
The dismissal was granted, bringing to an end the insane and un-
just series of legal assaults that had started more than four years earlier.
320
Surviving
I had spent thirty-three months in prison; my family had suffered untold
personal agony; the Party had spent many thousands of dollars in my
defense, money that could have been used to help the community.
Jensen was right, but not in the sense he intended. Justice had not
been served.
321
32
The people who have triumphed in their own revolution
should help those still struggling for liberation. This is
our internationalist duty.
chairman mao. Little Red Book
China
Today, when I think of my experiences in the People's Republic
of China— a country that overwhelmed me while I was there — they
seem somehow distant and remote. Time erodes the immediacy of the
trip; the memory begins to recede. But that is a common aftermath of
travel, and not too alarming. What is important is the effect that China
and its society had on me, and that impression is unforgettable. While
there, I achieved a psychological liberation I had never experienced
before. It was not simply that I felt at home in China; the reaction was
deeper than that. What I experienced was the sensation of freedom —
as if a great weight had been lifted from my soul and I was able to be
myself, without defense or pretense or the need for explanation. I felt
absolutely free for the first time in my life; — completely free among my
fellow men. This experience of freedom had a profound effect on me,
because it confirmed my belief that an oppressed people can be liber-
ated if their leaders persevere in raising their consciousness and in
struggling relentlessly against the oppressor.
Because my trip was so brief and made under great pressure, there
were many places I was unable to visit and many experiences I had to
forgo. Yet there were lessons to be learned from even the most ordinary
and commonplace encounters: a question asked by a worker, the re-
sponse of a schoolchild, the attitude of a government official. These
322
China
slight and seemingly unimportant moments were enlightening, and thev
taught me much. For instance, the behavior of the police in China was
a revelation to me. They are there to protect and help the people, not
to oppress them. Their courtesy was genuine; no division or suspicion
exists between them and the citizens. This impressed me so much that
when I returned to the United States and was met by the Tactical
Squad at the San Francisco airport (they had been called out because
nearly a thousand people came to the airport to welcome us back), it
was brought home to me all over again that the police in our country
are an occupying, repressive force. I pointed this out to a customs
officer in San Francisco, a Black man, who was armed, explaining to
him that I felt intimidated seeing all the guns around. I had just left
a country, I told him, where the army and the police are not in op-
position to the people but are their servants.
I received the invitation to visit China shortly after my release from
the Penal Colony, in August, 1970. The Chinese were interested in the
Party's Marxist analysis and wanted to discuss it with us as well as show
us the concrete application of theory in their society. I was eager to go
and applied for a passport in late 1970, which was finally approved a
few months later. However, I did not make the trip at that time because
of Bobby's and Ericka's trial in New Haven. Nonetheless, I wanted to
see China very much, and when I learned that President Nixon was
going to visit the People's Republic in February, 1972, I decided to
beat him to it. My wish was to deliver a message to the government of
the People's Republic and the Communist Party, which would be de-
livered to Nixon when he made his visit.
I made the trip in late September, 1971, between my second and
third trials, going without announcement or publicity because I was
under an indictment. I had only ten days to spend in China. Even
though I had no travel restrictions and had been given a passport, the
California courts could have tied me down at any time because I was
under court bail, so I avoided the state's jurisdiction by going to New
York instead of directly to Canada from California. Because of my un-
certainty about what the power structure might do, I continued to avoid
publicity after reaching New York, since it was not implausible that
the authorities might place a federal hold on me, claiming illegal
flight. By flying from New York to Canada I was able to avoid federal
jurisdiction, and once in Canada I caught a plane to Tokyo. Police
323
Revolutionary Suicide
agents knew of my intentions, and they followed me all the way —
right to the Chinese border. Two comrades, Elaine Brown and Robert
Bay, went with me. I have no doubt that we were allowed to go only
because the police believed we were not coming back. If they had
known I intended to return, they probably would have done every-
thing possible to prevent the trip. The Chinese government understood
this, and while I was in China, they offered me political asylum, but I
told them I had to return, that my struggle is in the United States of
America.
Going through the immigration and customs services of the im-
perialist nations was the same dehumanizing experience we had come
to expect a.s part of our daily life in the United States. In Canada,
Tokyo, and Hong Kong they took everything out of our bags and
searched them completely. In Tokyo and Hong Kong we were even
subjected to a skin search. I thought I had left that routine behind in
the California Penal Colony, but I know that the penitentiary is only
one kind of captivity within the larger prison of a racist society. When
we arrived at the free territory, where security is supposed to be so
tight and evervone suspect, the comrades with the red stars on their
hats asked us for our passports. Seeing they were in order, they simply
bowed and asked us if the luggage was ours. When we said yes, they
replied, "You have just passed customs." They did not open our bags
when we arrived or when we left.
As we crossed into China the border guards held their automatic
rifles in the air as a signal of welcome and well-wishing. The Chinese
truly live by the slogan "Political power grows out of the barrel of a
gun," and their behavior constantly reminds you of that. For the first
time I did not feel threatened by a uniformed person with a weapon;
the soldiers were there to protect the citizenry.
The Chinese were disappointed that we had only ten days to spend
with them and wanted us to stay longer, but I had to be back for the
start of my third trial. Still, much was accomplished in that short time,
traveling to various parts of the country, visiting factories, schools, and
communes. Everywhere we went, large groups of people greeted us with
applause, and we applauded them in return. It was beautiful. At every
airport thousands of people welcomed us, applauding, waving their
Little Red Books, and carrying signs that read we support the black
PANTHER PARTY, DOWN WITH U.S. IMPERIALISM, Or WE SUPPORT THE
324
('hind
AMERICAN PEOPLE BUT THE NIXON IMPERIALIST REGIME MUST W OVKH
THROWN.
We also visited as many embass.es as possible. Sightseeing took
second place to Black Panther business and our desire to talk with
revolutionary brothers, so the Chinese arranged for us to meet the
ambassadors of various countries. The North Korean Ambassador gave
us a sumptuous dinner and showed films of his country. We also met
the Ambassador from Tanzania, a fine comrade, as well as delegations
from North Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government of
South Vietnam. We missed the Cuban and Albanian embassies because
we were short of time.
When news of our trip reached the rest of the world, widespread at-
tention focused on it, and the press was constantly after us to find out
why we had come. They were wondering if we sought to spoil Nixon's
visit since we were so strongly opposed to his reactionary regime. Much
of the time we were harassed by reporters. One evening a Canadian re-
porter would not leave my table despite my asking him several
times. He m SI sted on hanging around, questioning us, even though we
had made it plain we had nothing to say to him. I finally became dis-
gusted with his persistence and ordered him to leave. Seconds later
the Chinese comrades arrived with the police and asked if I wanted
him arrested. I said no, I only wanted him to leave my table. After that
we stayed in a protected villa with a Red Army honor guard outside.
This was another strange sensation— to have the police on our side.
We had been promised an opportunity to meet Chairman Mao, but
the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party felt this would
not be appropriate since I was not a head of state. But we did have
two meetings with Premier Chou En-lai. One of them lasted two hours
and included a number of other foreign visitors; the other was a six-hour
private meeting with Premier Chou and Comrade Chiang Ch'ing the
wife of Chairman Mao. We discussed world affairs, oppressed people in
general, and Black people in particular,
On National Day, October 1, we attended a large reception in the
Great Hall of the People with Premier Chou En-lai and comrades from
Mozambique, North Korea, North Vietnam, and the Provisional Gov-
ernment of South Vietnam. Normally, Chairman Mao's appearance is
the crowning event of the most important Chinese celebration, but
this year the Chairman did not put in an appearance. When we entered
325
lirwlutionary Suicide
the hall, a band was playing the Internationale, and we shared tables
with the head of Peking University, the head of the North Korean Army,
and Comrade Chiang Ch'ing, Mao's wife. We felt it was a great
privilege.
Everything I saw in China demonstrated that the People's Republic
is a free and liberated territory with a socialist government. The way is
open for people to gain their freedom and determine their own destiny.
It was an amazing experience to see in practice a revolution that is
going forward at such a rapid rate. To see a classless society in opera-
tion is unforgettable. Here, Marx's dictum — from each according to his
abilities, to each according to his needs— is in operation.
But I did not go to China just to admire. I went to learn and also
to criticize, since no society is perfect, There was little, however, to find
fault with. The Chinese insist that you find something to criticize. They
believe strongly in the most searching self-examination, in criticism of
others and, in turn, of self. As they say, without criticism the hinges on
the door begin to squeak. It is very difficult to pay them compliments.
Criticize us, they would say, because we are a backward country, and I
always replied, "No, you are an underdeveloped country." I did have
one criticism to make during a visit to a steel factory. This factory had
thick black smoke pouring into the air. I told the Chinese that in the
United States there is pollution because factories are spoiling the air;
in some places the people can hardly breathe. If the Chinese continue
to develop their industry rapidly, I said, and without awareness of the
consequences, they will also make the air unfit to breathe. I talked with
the factory workers, saying that man is nature but also in contradiction
to nature, because contradictions are the ruling principle of the uni-
verse. Therefore, although they were trying to raise their levels of
living, they might also negate the progress if they failed to handle that
contradiction in a rational way. I explained that man opposes nature,
but man is also the internal contradiction in nature. Therefore, while
he is trying to reverse the struggle of opposites based upon unity, he
might also eliminate himself. They understood this and said they are
seeking ways to remedy this problem.
My experiences in China reinforced my understanding of the rev-
olutionary process and my belief in the necessity of making a concrete
analysis of concrete conditions. The Chinese speak with great pride
about their history and their revolution and mention often the in-
326
( 'hiiiii
vincible thoughts of Chairman Mao Tse-tung. But they also tell yen,
"This was our revolution based upon a concrete analysis <>| euueiete
conditions, and we cannot direct you, only give you the pnueiples. It
is up to you to make the correct creative application." It wa ,s a strange
yet exhilarating experience to have traveled thousands ol miles, across
continents, to hear their words. For this is what Bobby Scale and I had
concluded in our own discussions five years earlier m Oakland, as we
explored ways to survive the abuses of the capitalist system in the
Black communities of America. Theory was not enough, we had said.
We knew we had to act to bring about change. Without fully realizing
it then, we were following Mao's belief that "if you want to know the
theory and methods of revolution, you must take part in revolution. All
genuine knowledge originates in direct experience."
327
We must undoubtedly criticize wrong ideas of every de-
scription. It certainly would not be right to refrain from
criticism, look on while wrong ideas spread unchecked
and allow them to monopolize the field. Mistakes must
be criticized and poisonous weeds fought wherever they
crop up.
chairman mao, Little Red Book
The Defection of Eldridge
and Reactionary Suicide
A revolutionary part)' is under continual stress from both in-
ternal and external forces. By its very nature a political organization
dedicated to social change invites attack from the established order,
constantly vigilant to destroy it. This danger is taken for granted by
the committed revolutionary. Indeed, oppression first shaped the spirit
of resistance within him, and so it can neither defeat nor destroy his
resolve. But he has two far greater enemies — the failure of-vision and
the loss of the original revolutionary concept. Either of these can lead
to alienation from those the revolutionary seeks to set free. Eldridge
Cleaver was guilty' of both.
When I came out of prison in August, 1970, the Party was in a
shambles. This was understandable for a number of reasons: Bobby and
I had been off the streets and in jail for a long time, and it had been
difficult to direct the Party on a day-to-day basis from prison cells. Then,
too, the Party was harassed and beleaguered. Intelligence organizations
328
The Defection of Eldridge and Reactionary Suicide
throughout the country had become obsessed with the desire to de-
stroy the Black Panther Party. Many of the brothers had been hunted
down, imprisoned, or killed.
These external assaults were formidable. But there was a far more
serious reason for the Party's difficulties, one that threatened its very
raison d'etre: the Party was heading down the road to reactionarv sui-
cide. Under the influence of Eldridge Cleaver, it had lost sight of its
initial purpose and become caught up in irrelevant causes. Estranged
from Black people who could not relate to it, the Black Panther Party
had defected from the community.
The Part)' was born in a particular time and place. It came into be-
ing with a call for self-defense against the police who patrolled our
communities and brutalized us with impunity. Until then, there had
been little resistance to the occupiers. We sought to provide a counter-
force, a positive image of strong and unafraid Black men in the com-
munity. The emphasis on weapons was a necessary phase in our evolu-
tion, based on Frantz Fahon's contention that the people have to be
shown that the colonizers and their agents — the police — are not bullet-
proof. We saw this action as a bold step in making our program known
and raising the consciousness of the people.
But we soon discovered that weapons and uniforms set us apart
from the community. We were looked upon as an ad hoc military group,
acting outside the community fabric and too radical to be a part of it.
Perhaps some of our tactics at the time were extreme; perhaps we
placed too much emphasis on military action. We saw ourselves as the
revolutionary "vanguard" and did not fully understand then that only
the people can create the revolution. At any rate, for two or three years,
our image in the community was intimidating. The people misunder-
stood us and did not follow our lead in picking up the gun. At the time,
there was no clear solution to this dilemma. We were a young revolu-
tionary group seeking answers and ways to alleviate racism. We had
chosen to confront an evil head on and within the limits of the law. But
perhaps our military strategy was too much of "a great leap forward."
Nonetheless, I believe that the Black Panther approach in 1966 and
1967 was basically a good and necessary phase. Our military actions
called attention to our program and our plans for the people. Our
strategy brought us dedicated members, and it gained the respect of
the struggling peoples of the Third World. Most important, it raised
329
Haiwlulioiianj Suicide.
Hi" .•uiistwusw.ss ..J' Black aiul white eidzen.s about the relationship
police and minorities in this country. It is difficult to realize
f |OW fnuch police relations with the Black community have changed
m Ah sliorl years. Our communities are still not free from brutal inci-
irftls and c-oiruptioti. but it is nonetheless true that police departments
MVe Ueiniue more scnsitivu to the problems of urban minorities. To-
'l«v, it r. llir rare pnJiw commissioner who has not tried to establish
' 1 |)»1>1lr relations between police and Blacks. The average
1 ''' ' '"" o.r, a e.ri'.ilr'i- awareness of police abuses that once were
IriiMlh ,t)]y i.vriliiokccl. This advance in consciousness is due in
I I'ai! in .mi military phase. Ho Chi Minh said that military tactics
111,11 ''' ] 11 1 1 5 1 1 1 1 ''>t military reasons are unsound, while military tactics
Kiiiili public frji political reasons are perfectly correct. We have done
as In- '■aid. (Jin military strategies are now known for political reasons,
['ail revolution is not an action; it is a process. Times change, and
policies oi the past are not necessarily effective in the present. Our
military strategies were not frozen. As conditions changed, so did our
tactics. Patrolling the community was only one step in our ten-point
program and had never been regarded as the sole community endeavor
ol the Black Panther Party. As a matter of fact, the right to bear arms
for protection appeared near the end of our program, as Point 7, and
came only after those demands we considered far more urgent— free-
dom, employment, education, and housing. Our community programs
—now called survival programs— were of great importance from the
beginning; we had always planned to become involved in Black people's
daily struggle for survival and sought only the means to serve the com-
munity's needs.
But the Party was sabotaged from within and without. For years
the Establishment media presented a sensational picture of us, em-
phasizing violence and weapons. Colossal events like Sacramento, the
Ramparts confrontation with the police, the shoot-out of April 6, 196S,
were distorted and their significance never understood or analvzed. Fur-
thermore, our ten-point program was ignored and our plans for survival
overlooked. The Black Panthers were identified with the gun.
Eldridge Cleaver identified with other negative aspects of the
Party. It is not a coincidence that he joined the Party only after the
Ramparts confrontation. What appealed to him were force, firepower,
and the intense moment when combatants stood at the brink of death.
330
The Defection of Eldridge and Reactionary Suicide
For him this was the revolution. Eldridge's ideology was based on the
rhetoric of violence; his speeches abounded in either/or absolutes, like
"Either pick up the gun or remain a sniveling coward." He would not
support the survival programs, refusing to see that they were a neces-
sary part of the revolutionary process, a means of bringing the. people
closer to the transformation of society. He believed this transformation
could take place only through violence, by picking up the gun and
storming the barricades, and his obsessive belief alienated him more
and more from the community. By refusing to abandon the position of
destruction and despair, he underestimated the enemy and took on the
role of the reactionary suicide.
Long before Eldridge's actual defection from the Party he had
taken the first steps of his journey into spiritual exile bv failing to
identify with the people. He shunned the political intimacy 'that human
bemgs demand of their leaders. When he fled the country, his exile
became a physical reality. Eldridge had cut himself off from the revolu-
tionary's greatest source of strength-unity with the people, a shared
sense of purpose and ideals. His flight was a suicidal gesture, and his
continuing exile in Algeria is a symbol of his defection from the com-
munity on all levels— geographical, psychological, and spiritual.
From a dialectical point of view, something positive has arisen out
of Eldridge's defection, While he and his followers still identify with
aspects of the Party that once alienated us from the community, the
Party has moved in a different direction. He has taken the media's
image squarely upon his own shoulders. We are glad to be free of the
burden. What little we lost in credibility we have gained in a wider
acceptance of the Party by the community, We have reached a more
advanced state. There has been a qualitative leap forward, a growth in
consciousness.
Camus wrote that the revolutionary's "real generosity toward the
future lies in giving all to the present." This, he says, grows out of an
intense love for the earth, for our brothers, for justice. The Black-
Panther Party embraces this principle. By giving all to the present we
reject fear, despair, and defeat. We work to repair the breaches of the
past. We strive to carry out the revolutionary principle of transforma-
tion, and through long struggle, in Camus's words, "to remake the soul
of our time."
331
EPILOGUE
I Am We
There is an old African saying, "I am we." If you met an Afri-
can in ancient times and asked him who he was, he would reply, "I
am we." This is revolutionary suicide: I, we, all of us are the one and
the multitude,
So main- of mv comrades are gone now. Some tight partners, crime
partners, and brothers off the block are begging on the street, Others
are in asylum, penitentiary, or grave. They are all suicides of one kind
or another who had the sensitivity and tragic imagination to see the
oppression. Some overcame; they are the revolutionary suicides. Others
were reactionary suicides who either overestimated or underestimated
the enemy, but in any case were powerless to change their conception
of the oppressor.
The difference lies in hope and desire. By hoping and desiring, the
revolutionary suicide chooses life; he is, in the words of Nietszche, '"an
arrow of longing for another shore." Both suicides despise tyranny, but
the revolutionary is both a great despiser and a great adorer who longs
J[?r another shore. The reactionary suicide must learn, as his brother
the revolutionary has learned, that the desert is not a circle. It is a
spiral. When we have passed through the desert, nothing will be the
same.
You cannot bare your throat to the murderer. As George Jackson
said, you must defend yourself and take the dragon position as in
karate and make the front kick and the back kick when you are sur-
rounded. You do not beg because your enemy comes with the butcher
332
I Am We
knife in one hand and the hatchet in the other. "He will not become a
Buddhist overnight."
The Preacher said that the wise man and the fool have the same
end; they go to the grave as a dog. Who sends us to the grave? The
unknowable, the force that dictates to all classes, all territories, all
ideologies; he is death, the Big Boss. An ambitious man seeks to de-
throne the Big Boss, to free himself, to control when and how he
will go to the grave.
There is another illuminating story of the wise man and the fool,
found in Mao's Little Red Book: A foolish old man went to North
Mountain and began to dig; a wise old man passed by and said, "Why
do you dig, foolish old man? Do you not know that you cannot move
the mountain with a little shovel?" But the foolish old man answered
resolutely, "While the mountain cannot get any higher, it will get
lower with each shovelful. When I pass on, my sons and his sons and
his son's sons will go on making the mountain lower. Why can't we
move the mountain?" And the foolish old man kept digging, and the
generations that followed after him, and the wise old man looked on
in disgust. But the resoluteness and the spirit of the generations that
followed the foolish old man touched God's heart, and God sent two
angels who put the mountain on their backs and moved the mountain.
This is the story Mao told. When he spoke of God he meant the
six hundred million who had helped him to move imperialism and
bourgeois thinking, the two great mountains.
The reactionary suicide is "wise," and the revolutionary suicide is a
"fool," a fool for the revolution in the way that Paul meant when he
spoke of being "a fool for Christ." That foolishness can move the moun-
tain of oppression; it is our great leap and our commitment to the dead
and the unborn.
We will touch God's heart; we will touch the people's heart, and
together we will move the mountain.
333
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